Pool.com

Type:	Corporation
Industry:	Secondary Domain Market
Founded:	2003
Founder(s):	Rob Hall, J. Michael Arrington
Headquarters:	26 Auriga Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2E 8B7
Country:	Canada
Website:	Pool.com

The business model of Pool.com is one in which domains are acquired when dropped or otherwise made available and then auctioned. Demand is established as customers "back order" domains that they need.

The site also contains a marketplace where sales and purchase of domains can occur. Pool.com has several thousand domains for sale. The site functions by tracking domains that are deleted that thus become available for sale, and it tracks tens of thousands of these every day.

There are also a number of other services offered that are related to the main business. They offer featured domain lists and key word alerts. The fact that the site functions via auction provides another useful market for those with domains to sell. At the same time, since the site tracks so many domains that are deleted, it is an excellent place for a person dealing with domains to do business, allowing for a rapid purchase as well as auctioning off of domains in one's portfolio.

Pool.com has quite an extensive network of registrars that powers the acquisition of names. These back order requests can be made free of charge, and allow the acquisition of a deleted domain at a nominal cost, unless there are multiple bidders and then any price is possible.

Pool.com's interface is well designed and provides easy viewing of domains going under auction, and enables you to put domains from your portfolio up for auction as well. There are adequate domain searches, as well as categorized listings to make purchases easier.

Business

Pool.com introduced the concept of auctioning off domains that came to the market and charging a customer fees only if they actually acquired a domain.

This made them very competitive as other sites in the same industry charged a customer whether they won a similar auction or not. Of course, now a lot of sites in the industry have imitated this feature, but the fact is that Pool.com instituted it.

Products and Services

Acquisition and auction of domain names, and its variety of supportive infrastructure.

The site's interface is considered rather bare, but on the other hand this is hardly an industry that requires a graphics intensive site. The interface is easy to use, and provides affective access to the site's vast domain marketing infrastructure.

Pool.com's domain market is both innovative and effective, and their auction system of selling available domains allows for cost effective sales and purchases of domains.

Recent news

During the year 2010 Pool.com began to auction IDN names that had Hebrew characters. With the considerable customer base, especially in Israel, this auction is expected to open a considerable market in Hebrew IDNs.

Controversy

Pool.com has received flack for advertising and selling pre-registrations for new gTLD domains months, even years, ahead of when they would be potentially be ready. In August, 2011 it was noted that Pool.com was advertising registration for new TLDs on its homepage. The new gTLD program had only just been approved by ICANN two months earlier, and no new gTLDs had yet been submitted, accepted, or created. It was unclear if this was a mere test run at the advertising and marketing approach or an actual business move.

Digital Archery Engine

In April 2012, the company announced its digital archery service offering to new gTLD applicants through its Digital Archery Engine. The company will charge $25,000 if the company will be able to acquire acquire a guaranteed time stamp that will put an applicant to the first batch that will be initially evaluated by ICANN. If an applicant is included in the first 50% of batches, the service fee will be $10,000 while applicants who will get lower batches than first 50% will be free.

Rob Hall, CEO of Pool.com's parent company Momentous confirmed that the company's clients for its Digital Archery Engine are applicants for brand gTLDs. According to Hall, he though that their primary clients who will be competing for the first batch would be those applying for generic strings but he noticed that brand owners want to be in the first batch. He said, "It’s a wider swath of TLDs that I thought originally. At first I thought for sure the generics and the domains that might be in competition. It’s amazing to me that a lot of people out there are saying the brands don’t care, the brands are doing this just defensively, the brands couldn’t care less about going first… but a lot of them do. A lot of them are saying ‘I want to be in that first batch’, which I wouldn’t have necessarily expected." Hall added that Pool.com's time stamp latency target is less than 6 milliseconds.

In a letter to ICANN, the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) criticized Pool.com and described it as an "insider exploiting the digital archery system as a “revenue extraction opportunity." In response, Hall is thankful to the IPC for the free advertisement and argued that the company is not manipulating anything or offering its service to insiders rather it is offered to everyone.

External links

• Pool.com

Intellectual Property Constituency