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Let's start with AOL's $350
million purchase of online advertising company Quigo.com
last week. That one caught my eye because we talked about Quigoin our very
first
Cover Story in 2003 about Igal Lichtman's DomainSpa.com
parking service - one of the first to add graphic elements to parking
pages. Igal, who also holds a major league domain portfolio, was one of
the early angel investors in Quigo and predicted back then that they would
be a major success. He was certainly right about that and it is nice to
see his bet pay off.
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WashingtonVC founder Michael
Mann announced several new executive appointments at the
company including a new Managing Partner, Eric Litman (that
is the job Mann himself filled until bringing Litman on board -
Michael's new title is Chairman). I met Eric while at the
GeoDomain Expo in San Francisco last week and he struck me as a
great guy who will win a lot of friends for the firm. Litman
(seen with colleague Lori Anne Wardi in the photo at right
taken last week in San Francisco) is a pioneer whose credits
include being a founder of DigitalNation, a
company that was acquired by Verio for $100 million. |
Eric
Litman (Managing Partner) and Lori Anne Wardi (Regional
Manager) of WashingtonVC |
The Domain
Development Corp. also announced a key hire last week,
bringing Sean P. Moriarty in from Yahoo! to serve as
the company's president. Moriarty was was in charge of managing Yahoo’s off-network
domain monetization business. California-based DDC says it offers a comprehensive monetization
and full-scale domain development service. Moriarty said, "I am
excited to be back in a small company environment, working with an
intelligent and passionate team that is nimble and focused on execution.
Our mission is to enhance the experience of parked sites for visitors,
owners and advertisers. In addition, we plan to continue to build on our
comprehensive development efforts as we evolve suitable domain names
into internet businesses.”
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As you know, TV writers are on strike
in Hollywood. I saw an especially interesting comment in a Forbes
Magazine piece about the strike called Why
the Writers Must Win by Lacey Rose. |
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The writers wisely want a bigger
piece of online income from their work and in the article
writer/director Josh Pate, whose credits include Friday
Night Lights (one of my favorite shows) and Surface,
explained why that is so important. "It's all about
the Internet, it's the big Kahuna, and both sides know
it," Pate said. "The deal that's made this year is the
most important for both sides in decades." There is a guy
that really gets it. |
Sedo.com
announced the results from its second .mobi "premium
name" online auction November 7th, reporting that proceeds totaled $760,000.
With bidders from 32 countries participating, the top sales included were taxi.mobi
($75,111), dating.mobi ($73,000), homes.mobi ($53,700), motels.mobi
($47,000), hotel.mobi ($46,000), date.mobi ($40,000) and
adult.mobi ($30,000). Sedo’s third and final dotMobi auction will run
November 28 through December 5. Details on that auction are
available at Sedo.com/dotmobi.
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Sedo
also just announced that their GreatDomains
site will launch another Premium Live Auction on November
29.This auction will combine their monthly November and
December auctions into one large holiday season event. The auction
will begin at 2pm U.S Eastern time |
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with
recording.com, coed.com,
websites.com, hangover.com
and Asia.net among the names that will be on the
block.
(Posted Nov.
21, 2007) |
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