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January 3, 2008

Oversee.net Acquires Moniker For $65 Million

Duncan Riley

19 comments »

moniker.jpgOversee.net has acquired domain registration and auction powerhouse Moniker for what is believed to be $65 million.

Oversee.net previously purchased Snapnames in May for $35 million and will integrate Moniker into its Snapnames Live service.

Moniker has become a leader in the continually growing second domain names market. We’ve covered Moniker auctions twice before (here and here); they may not have the volume of some of their competitors but they had carved out a strong niche at the top of the market.

Both parties said that the acquisition would strength their positions in a highly competitive market.

(in part via Domaintools)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. wayne lambright

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    wow… I need to get out of the cave more, I have never heard of moniker.com.

  2. elvirs

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    well then expired domains market in not dying as many had predicted.
    actually its completely in google’s hands to kill the value of expired domains but for some reason it does not and I really wonder why.

  3. Ilan

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    I transferred all my domains (about 300) from GoDaddy to Moniker after the “GoDaddy makes security site disappear after MySpace complains” story..

    Moniker are way better than any registrar, they are worth more than $65M
    Way to go!

  4. David Strand

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Only domainers even know about this Web 1.0 company. How is this Web 2.0 news?

  5. stone

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Were these guys once own by Kanoodle? What a weird fit. What do they do now after missing the acquisition binge last year? Not much by the loook of things.

  6. iCluck

    January 3rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    The synergy of these two companies will be perfect for all domain buyers, Sedo.com is an excellent source of domains for finding after-market domain names but it isn’t as vast as the services offered by these two companies, especially when combined. Good purchase, I just hope it works out.

  7. Behindthescenes

    January 3rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    You know it’s crazy to see a company like this, with their basic yet clean looking website make giant purchases like this.

    Notice that they haven’t even changed the copyright date in their footer. =)

  8. Allison

    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm

    An interesting part of the story that no one seems to be focusing on: why did Kanoodle sell Moniker?

  9. man

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    Look at monikers alexa, its dying quickly. Not a good buy.

  10. Tony K

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    @9

    Using Alexa to declare something dying is pretty stupid. Alexa’s stats are USELESS! based on their tool bar.

    And Moniker is one of the best domain registrars out there. I just started moving my entire portfolio over.

    Do some research beyond the voodoo magic of Alexa before making such an ignorant statement.

  11. Marzipan From Toledo

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Moniker is not dying, Alexa toolbar is

  12. Duncan Riley

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Tony K
    I’ve not tried Moniker for domain registrations, but I’ll have to take a look, but on the auction side its where the big name auctions are held now and they attract serious business. Man (#9), traffic with something like Moniker means nothing, the value is in the quality of the people who use it, and these guys are really close to the top of their market.

  13. lawrence

    January 4th, 2008 at 7:23 am

    maan, big time ka-ching for Monte Cahn…Moniker’s main man

  14. Dominik Mueller

    January 4th, 2008 at 8:12 am

    This has been a good buy. The two companies complete each other perfectly well. Moniker is certainly worth that much, in my opinion. They’re the best domain registrar I’ve used so far and they provide some other good domain services, too. For example, their escrow service for domains is far better and more secure than Escrow.com, they provide domain appraisals and their domain auctions have always been a success so far.

    It’s the combination of Moniker’s live auction experience and SnapNames’ online auction system that should help these companies grow faster than their competitors in the coveted market for domain auctions in 2008.

    And yes, it’s definitely not important how “1.0″ Moniker’s site looks or how much traffic their site receives, because chances are good that they have the most valuable clients in the domain registration business. Most domain professionals, who do not have their own ICANN accredited registrar, have their names registered at Moniker.

  15. Doug Mehus

    January 4th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    @5 - Moniker was previously owned by Seevast Corp., a venture capital-backed holding corporation that also owned pay-per-click text ad specialist Kanoodle and a contextual advertising brand Pulse 360. Seevast is retaining those properties and will presumably use the $65 million in cash to pay down debt, repay venture capitalists or make acquisitions.

    Hope that helps,
    Doug

  16. Ben

    January 4th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    Not 65. well below.

  17. Andrew

    January 18th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    All this differentiation between web 1.0 and web 2.0 gives me a laugh:

    http://domainnamewire.com/2008.....hats-good/

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