Fergie's Tech Blog

eNom Bought by Start-Up Led by Former MySpace CEO

A start-up headed by former MySpace.com chairman Richard Rosenblatt has bought domain registrar eNom, Inc., and is preparing a major push into domain-based advertising and commerce. Demand Media is backed by $120 million in funding from Wall Street investors and venture capital firms, and has been quietly acquiring a portfolio of more than 150,000 domains. Terms of the sale were not announced, as both firms are privately held.

The deal is likely to heighten investment interest in the domain name sector, which has been boosted by a trend trifecta - a surge in new domain registration, rising prices for resold domains and growing revenue from domain-based advertising.

eNom is the third-largest domain registrar with more than 6.4 million names under management. What is less widely known is that eNom is also the world's fifth-largest web hosting provider as measured by active sites - hostnames that contain content and thus are likely to be developed web sites generating hosting revenue each month. eNom hosts nearly 750,000 active sites, offering shared hosting plans priced at $7.80 a month.

posted by Fergie @ 5/02/2006 08:43:00 AM