Moniker

Industry:	Registrar
Founded:	2002
Founder(s):	Monte Cahn
Ownership:	KeyDrive SA
Headquarters:	20 SW. 27th Avenue, Suite 201 Pompano Beach, FL 30069
Country:	USA
Website:	moniker.com
Twitter:	@MonikerSnap
Key People
Craig Snyder, CEO

Moniker.com works with Snapnames.com to provide domain name auctions and management; both are a part of KeyDrive SA. Oversee.net acquired Moniker.com in 2008, and then merged its operations with SnapNames. Moniker was sold to Oversee.net by Seevast Corp. for $24 million USD, which had acquired Moniker in 2005. In January 2012, it was acquired for an undisclosed amount from Oversee.net by KeyDrive SA, which is the parent company of competitive registrar Key-Systems. SnapNames was also acquired in that deal. This move made Key-Systems the world's sixth largest ICANN accredited registrar.

Background

Moniker is known as the first, and arguably only, provider of Domain Asset Management™, a complete set of business services that provide companies a single-point-of-access to help manage and maximize the value of their domains. These services include: name creation, registration, acquisition, portfolio management, appraisal and escrow services, traffic monetization and after-market sales – all backed by unsurpassed customer service and security.

Moniker holds the industry's highest customer retention rate and pioneered the industry’s first domain appraisal formula.

Moniker.com is listed as a the primary nameserver for 2,965 domains.

History

According to RegistratStats.com, Monkier fell from being the 7th largest registrar to the 11th largest during the course of 2011. This was shortly followed by the January, 2012, departure of a prominent employee and rumors that more employees would be leaving due to its recent business decline.

High Profile Sales

Moniker completed the Industry's first domain sale for over $1 million dollars (wallstreet.com), and the first over $2 million dollars as well (autos.com). Other notable sales include:

• Porn.com - $9.5 million
• Cameras.com - $1.5 million
• Scores.com - $1.2 million
• Property.com - $750,000
• Freeporn.com - $4 million

Moniker sold 5 of the top 10 most expensive domains in 2010. Moniker's only competition was from Sedo, who sold 4; the remaining domain was sold privately. The top five domains sold by Moniker were:

• Slots.com - $5.5 million
• Dating.com - $1.75 million
• Photo.com - $1.25 million
• Zip.com - $1 million+
• Guns.com - $800,000

Premium Improvements

Moniker.com announced that it was planning on improving user interface and domain acquisition by putting up fewer domains in its Premium Live auction on February 3, 2011. There will will be no more than 100 domains, and it is only scheduled to last 90 minutes. The extended auction will include less than 500 domains and last two weeks. Previously, the extended auction had over 5,000 domain names, the work involved in presenting these and sorting through them likely inspired the slimmed down auctions.

Monte Cahn, Moniker, and Oversee

In 2008, Moniker was purchased by Oversee.net for $35 million USD. It had previously been acquired by Seevast in 2005. Part of the acquisition of Moniker by Oversee stipulated that its Founder and CEO, Monte Cahn, come along as the President of Moniker for 3 years. During this time he also filled other roles within the company, such as President of SnapNames. He left in December, 2010; in May, 20111 he filed a lawsuit against his former employer. He filed suit against Oversee, and named its CEO, Jeff Kupietzky, and its founder, Lawrence Ng; the suit was over alleged non-payment of a $13 million USD incentive plan.

In September, 2011, Mr. Cahn updated his claims of breach of contract and fraud after a judge tossed out his original claim. The new claim now contains specific language on how Oversee.net allegedly affected Moniker's revenue. He now states that the original acquisition was in violation of an agreement between Google and Oversee, and that Oversee improperly deflated Moniker's revenue and performance numbers.