Massive layoffs, big domain expiration and crypto winter
As I am preparing to launch WhoAPI newsletter (once again), I’ve decided to supplement our content with an occasional news roundup.
Let’s start with a four-letter .com domain name, since we’ve already covered news in that area. On top of that, this story converges with another topic we’ve written about in numerous occasions, and that’s when a reputable company let’s their domain name expire.
Domain name wadi.com expires and finds a new owner via auction
User Lonelynet broke the news on the NamePros forum and here’s what they had to say:
In 2015 wadi.com started as an ecommerce marketplace, with the backing of Rocket Internet. Wadi.com was headquartered in Dubai, selling products in UAE & Saudi with a focus on the Saudi market. It had raised $67 million in the largest Series A (to date) secured by a startup in MENA. Al Tayyar had invested about $33.3 million at a valuation of $100 million, acquiring 33% stake in the company.
Fast forwad to 2020 wadi.com completely shuts down without any announcement.
- Wadi means Valley in the Arabic Language
- wadi.com auction closed at $33,833
Newfold Digital acquires MarkMonitor
Newfold Digital (“Newfold”), a leading web and commerce technology provider backed by affiliates of Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. (“Clearlake“) and Siris Capital Group, LLC (“Siris”), today announced that it has completed its acquisition of MarkMonitor™, an industry-leading enterprise-level provider of domain management solutions from Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation.
Source: PR Newswire
Micro Acquire announces plans to upgrade to Acquire.com
Recently I interviewed Thomas Smale, the founder, and CEO of FE International. This gave us a nice sneak peek into the website acquisition market. Well seems that their competitor Micro Acquire is making waves as well.
Their CEO Andrew Gazdecki hinted at this change on Twitter. Here’s what we know about the domain name acquire.com:
- Originally registered on 2000-12-12, and it recently changed hands.
- As of Nov 14th, it’s registered at godaddy.com
- Nameservers are: NS77.DOMAINCONTROL.COM, NS78.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
For similar whois details about domain names, check our Whois API. Every new user gets 10,000 API requests for free.
But then again, who knows how these things play out. Back in 2018 search engine DuckDuckGo acquired the domain name duck.com. Did they rebrand? Well even today the domain name simply redirects to duckduckgo.com.
FTX exchange collapses
I don’t expect to write much about crypto in these monthly news roundups, but this news sent some powerful shockwaves across several avenues. The (social) media frenzy around Sam Bankman-Fried and ftx.com collapse and bankruptcy were on par with… well pretty much any trending news you can think of in 2022.
Billions of dollars were lost and it remains to be seen how this story unfolds. Among other things, price of Bitcoin went below $17,000 first since 2020.
How is the software industry doing?
It’s hard to say. The recent layoffs are staggering.
- Meta laying off more than 11,000 employees
- Amazon announces plans to layoff 10,000 employees
- After firing 3,800 employees, Elon Musk has reportedly laid off at least 4,400 contractual workers
- Shopify, Snap, Stripe, Coinbase and many others have reduced their headcunt coming into November 2022
- Twillio cut 11% of their workforce back in September 2022
But some companies haven’t fired anyone this year (yet), and according to tools such as Semrush show some growth. Digital Ocean is one of them.
The screenshot above was generated with a tool called Semrush. They are also a publicly traded company, and it went through some restructuring earlier this year due to part of their workforce being affected by the Russo-Ukrainian war. They are also growing in revenue, profits and website traffic.
I hope you liked this short news update which we will include in our upcoming newsletter.
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Founder and CEO of WhoAPI Inc. Goran Duskic is an internet entrepreneur since 2006. He co-founded and sold several online ventures, including a web hosting company.