DomainTools Blog

Oversee.net announced today that it has executed a definitive agreement with Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private equity firm, for an investment of $150 million in Oversee.net’s holding company. Specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The funds will be used to augment organic growth and acquire technologies that will enhance its suite of services in the online marketing and domain name industries. Oversee’s DomainSponsor will continue investing in technologies that monetize domain traffic. In 2007, Oversee moved assertively to build its domain name auction and related services capability, in part through the acquisitions of SnapNames and Moniker. The company will continue to evaluate acquisitions that extend its overall capabilities.

“Oak Hill understands that the online marketing, traffic and domain name sectors are rapidly growing, and they share our vision for establishing Oversee as a leading, trusted partner for domain owners and advertisers,” said Oversee.net co-founder and CEO Lawrence Ng. “Their commitment and support will add fuel for organic growth and will help us capitalize on opportunities to broaden our capabilities.”

Robert Morse, a Partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners, added, “Oversee is an innovative company which we believe is well positioned for growth over the coming years. We’re looking forward to working with Lawrence and his talented team as they play a leadership role in this dynamic industry.”

The transaction is expected to close by the end of January 2008.

Oversee.net announced today that they have acquired Moniker but the terms of the transaction were not disclosed, however it was believed to be around $26 Million dollar transaction. Monte Cahn has agreed to a multi-year commitment with Oversee by continuing to run Moniker.

Oversee also acquired SnapNames in May of 2007 for around $35 Million. Oversee will leverage the two divisions’ capabilities by adding Moniker’s live auction and back-office services to SnapNames Live.

The first demonstration of the integration will be at DOMAINfest Global later this month, where SnapNames Live will lead and conduct the auction, with Moniker providing valuation and escrow services. More integrated services are planned, including:

• Deepening Moniker’s continuing commitment to its auction partners through the use of the SnapNames Live technology in Moniker-managed auctions
• The addition of DomainSponsor as an available option in Moniker’s TrafficClub monetization service
• Availability of Moniker’s registrar services for SnapNames and DomainSponsor customers
• Inclusion of traffic and monetization history as data for domain name auctions
• A complete set of Domain Asset Management services that offer domain owners all the tools necessary to profitably manage their domains

Commenting on the transaction, Moniker CEO Cahn said, “Oversee’s advanced technology platform and strong financial resources give us the capability to focus on further expanding our market opportunity. This is a dynamic industry, and our collaboration with SnapNames puts Oversee well ahead of any competitor. This is a tremendous opportunity for Oversee and Moniker.”

“We are delighted that Monte Cahn and his team of experienced professionals are becoming part of the Oversee family, Our primary objective, as a company, is to continue adding and developing capabilities that offer customers a greater breadth of products and services. Moniker is widely respected by industry players and has a reputation for knowledge, security, and professionalism.” said Lawrence Ng, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Oversee.

Personally I am glad to hear that SnapNames will be including traffic and monetization history into their auction service. This is a move in the right direction and DomainTools is also seeking expand on what we already do in the Auction space by providing this data. We will work with all leading parking companies to make the history and stats available when domains are being purchased at auction. I am working on an open standard for sharing this information along with secure authorization procedures for access to that data. I believe the next evolution for our industry will be more visibility into the domain history and monetization performance.

I saw this interesting Google Ad today. I saw the ad inside my gmail account, but the weird thing is that this ad was for a PPC page. The ad was for the domain name “V V hite House.com”, which looks like whitehouse.com. Is this an Ad designed to arbitrage Google traffic, or is the domain really being sold or leased? The ad took me to a PPC page over at Oversee with no ability to buy the domain or lease it. The only thing on the landing page was a bunch of PPC ads. Perhaps this ad is being shown on PPC pages as well, which would really complete the circle. When a parking page is being advertised, you know something odd is going on. I honestly thought the domain was being sold but it turned out to be an ad for a parking page.

Upon a deeper check I took a look at the whois record for vvhitehouse.com and it appears to be owned by Domainamania.com LLC, which is a snapnames company, which is an Oversee company, which is the company that actually parks the domain. The domain whois record said it was listed for sale at Sedo for $2500. So I visited the Sedo for sale page for the domain and it had this description:

The ClickAlike.com portfolio includes look-alikes for many of the highest priced generic domains ever sold, including some of this years top-selling domains. ClickAlikes are a whole new breed. Clickalikes can be a thrifty and clever fiat to enable otherwise unattainable marketability. Because ClickAlikes convey the same meaning as the actual generic domain, (for example, www.incorporation.com can be represented as www.lncorporation.com), they can be an extremely important asset in driving web traffic.

Which means Click-A-Like domains cost $6.42 to register and can be sold for $2500. That is a nice profit. I wonder if anyone is buying them? If so, I can see a bunch of domainers going out and registering these types of domains. I went over to the domain being advertised (ClickaLike.com) in the Sedo description and it was a parking page. Go figure.

UPDATE: My deeper check that showed the domain was for sale on Sedo was half correct. The previous owner had listed it for sale on Sedo and it is still listed. Sedo has no automated mechanism of removing the old listings, so there may be a lot of old listings that are not truly for sale. Snapnames and Oversee are not associated with ClickALike.com. That description must have been the previous owner. Snapnames registered the domain for $6.20 this summer on a drop. Snapnames claims no ownership of the Google Ad. So it appears on the surface that the old owner (JB of WirelessGarden.com) is still running advertising to sell or lease his old domain which he failed to renew in April of this year. Wow. You see something new everyday.

This is not good news for Oversee.net. Oversee.net just purchased Snapnames for $35 Million and it looks like their investment is going to go south very quickly. Network Solutions has filed for a trademark on NameJet, a service that will feature that same services Network Solutions current partner Snapnames is providing. For the guys that cashed out of Snapnames they had perfect timing or perhaps they awoke the sleeping whale by not offering the company to them. Network Solutions may have been angry they were not consulted or offered the Snapnames sale. Since most of the value of Snapnames is locked up around Network Solutions expiring domains it will be interesting to see this play out.

The domain name NameJet.com was purchased off of Afternic a while ago and it stands to reason that purchase was by the first registrar, the almighty Network Solutions. While the domain is currently at eNom the chance that eNom is involved in the new service seems remote. I talked with a high level source at eNom and they had no idea what NameJet was. I would expect Network Solutions to make an announcement soon that all expiring domains inside Network Solutions will no longer Transfer-Fulfill through Snapnames.

Snapnames has a patent pending on what they do with Network Solutions, so I wonder if that will stop Network Solutions or if Network Solutions will fight the patent before it is finalized.

Word Mark	NAMEJET
Goods and Services	IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: On-line auction services; on-line auction services featuring domain names; on-line auction services for businesses, consumers, domain name holders; domain name registration and sales services; on-line bidding services featuring domain names; domain name backorder request services; on-line proxy bidding services
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number	77287213
Filing Date	September 24, 2007
Current Filing Basis	1B
Original Filing Basis	1B
Owner	(APPLICANT) Network Solutions, LLC LTD LIAB CO DELAWARE Suite 300 13861 Sunrise Valley Drive Herndon VIRGINIA 20171
Attorney of Record	Brian J. Winterfeldt
Type of Mark	SERVICE MARK
Register	PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE

This was first spotted by trademark watcher TradeMork.

Oversee.net, a technology-driven online marketing solutions company, today announced it had acquired over $7 million in domain portfolios during May and had acquired a total of 66 domain portfolios in the past ten months. More than 40% of these portfolio owners have completed repeat sales with the Company.

The Company is accelerating its buying program in the third quarter of this year and is actively seeking to increase its acquisition targets. Oversee has become a preeminent player in the portfolio acquisition market. The Company’s internally created acquisition process allows it to move swiftly from the offer stage, through documentation and funding, to integration, in approximately seven days. Oversee plans to continue its acquisition program and be a viable source of liquidity for domainers.

“Our goal is to accelerate our portfolio acquisition program and grow our domain services business even more aggressively,” said Jeff Kupietzky, Executive Vice President of Oversee and General Manager of Oversee Domain Services. “We are uniquely qualified to understand and exploit the value of domains because of our proprietary technology, superior monetization expertise and experience working with the domainer community. With estimates of 10-20% of paid search traffic now coming through direct navigation, we expect even more interest in this business.”

Read the full press release.

A new lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District Court of Illinois by Vulcan Golf against the following companies: Google, Inc. Oversee.net, Sedo LLC, Dotster, Internet REIT, and John Does 1 through 10. The Civil Docket for the case is number 1:07-cv-03371. The demand is for $1,000,000 and it cites Trademark Infringement (15:1051). The case was filed on the 15th of this month and the nature of the suit was “470 Racketeer/Corrupt Organization”. The documents for the case were not available because they are said to be not legible however one could obtain those documents directly from the clerk’s office by calling 312-435-5699 during normal business hours.

I assume this is a domain parking lawsuit because they name parking companies. Thanks to George Kirikos for giving us a heads up.

We have seen some companies complain about their name triggering ads on the actual Google search engine but my gut feeling tells me this lawsuit has to do with companies that have domain typos of Vulcan Golf.com.

As we reported yesterday, Snapnames sold to Oversee.net. Today they send a note to their customers let them know. Oversee announced earlier this year that they have been granted a $60 million dollar line of Credit from Bank of America. So it sounds like some of that line of Credit was used to make the purchase of Snapnames. We suspect the price they paid was around $50 Million. A few bidders on the company confirmed that $25 Million was not the price and they knew it was much higher. Snapnames has a sister company called Oregon Names which collects and monetizes domain names so we suspect that sister company was sold as part of the deal but we have no confirmation yet.

This is the letter which was sent to Snapnames customers:

To SnapNames Customers:

I’m writing to inform you that SnapNames has agreed to be acquired by Oversee.net. Oversee, a company already familiar to many in the domain name industry, is a technology-driven online marketing solutions company that offers an impressive array of services to domain name owners. You can learn more about the company at www.oversee.net.

It’s important that you understand there will be no changes to the way SnapNames provides its services. This is a combination of two industry leaders with outstanding reputations for serving domain name investors and customers at all levels.

We were attracted to Oversee for many reasons, including the opportunity to offer SnapNames customers a greater breadth of service offerings. Together, the two companies can provide services that support our customers’ needs throughout the entire life cycle of a domain name, including procurement, monetization and sales.

This transaction is expected to close in mid-June. There is more information available on our Web site at www.snapnames.com. Of course, we’re always available to assist you in any way we can, and encourage your questions and comments. Our support team is available to you here:

On the Web: http://snapnames.custhelp.com
By e-mail: support@snapnames.com

At SnapNames, you will continue to find the world’s largest selection of expired domain names. You’ll find no changes to your account or the way you do business with us. We value you as a customer and thank you for your continued business.

Sincerely,

Sudhir Bhagwan
Chief Executive Officer

A few customers have feared that Oversee would have a conflict of Interest in running auctions at Snapnames. The theory is they pull good domains out of the auction and keep them for themselves. The registrars that gives Snapnames the domains will make sure that does not happen, so that should not be a fear. We can safely safe that will not happen.

You heard it here first. The Industry leader in Auctions has been bought by Oversee.net. You may know Oversee.net better as DomainSponsor.com. DomainSponsor is a leader in Domain Monetization. We are not sure if OregonNames was sold as well but it would seem likely.

Snapnames has been for sale for a long time and but it came down to two bidders. Oversee turned out to be the biggest bidder.

Snapnames said nothing would change after the sale, it is business as usual and operations would continue as normal.

More details on this break news as it happens.

Update: Frank Schilling covered this just after us. He is reporting the sale is 25 Million. We are hearing it is much higher. Possible around 35 Million.