Is Afternic going out of business as suspected?

[David G]

Anyone else notice Afternic seemingly has thrown in the towel on their now worthless website?

The TopStories section was last updated July 12.

The Quote of The Week is approx' 6 mos old March or earlier

Domain Week in Review last updated July 12.

Member Poll Results is several mos old.

Last Exclusive Article is dated July 12.

The emailed Urly Indicator is a shadow of its former self and its publishing schedule seems to have been greatly reduced.

Most of their once popular outside paid ads are gone.

Today's News dated July 12 - not exactly Today! What idiots

In all likelihood a big reason they have given up on their once excellent website is the fact they lost so many members when the dropped appraisals, forums and other once great content. I know I only visited there a few times since they did that. Their traffic must be down considerably.

After Register.com paid almost 40 Million $ for Afternic how in the world can they run it into the ground like they have done? What amazing corporate stupidity. Is it any wonder Register.com is also on the decline?

[William9]

We have all noted and been hurt by the degradation in site services you mentioned. Could the situation be that costs are merely being controlled to match the revenues and interest. My analogy would be real estate offices that only keep the heat, lights, and electricity on when at the bottom of the real estate sales cycle (7 years?). But when the cycle turns up - hire 5 agents for the empty office. Is it 3 years until the cycle turns up?

William

[DomeBase]

Their greatest asset was their client base -- visitors, etc.

In the likely event that is lost, a very sad tale indeed. Very avoidable. I have seen other companies pay premiums for mergers and acquisitions and then squander value in other fields as well.

On the bright side, I would estimate that 16.24% :razz: of this value has now transferred to the DNForum, so that Dan should have an intangible asset worth roughly ($40 million)(.1624). Deflate this by 80% for the dot-bomb cycle and you only get around $1.3 million. Sorry for the low number, Dan.

Register.com seems to be shutting down the domain reseller elements of Afternic.

I think that Afternic itself will remain active as strictly the secondary market tool for Register.com, with few additional functions or services.

A few months ago, when Register.com overhauled their site, they added in the "Afternic" step to their domain name registration process, where a regged name leads to the Virtual Broker "Make Offer" screen prior to allowing a whois.

It seems that the peculiarities of domain names preclude an industry-specific brokerage. Domain names are one of the only "assets" in the world which can have absolutely no value.

I think only individual brokers and developers will continue to thrive in the domain industry.

Miles

[NameBox]

Agree with Miles. Afternic was poisoned by the sheer amount of garbage listed, and unreasonable and delusional asking prices. Too difficult for an interested party to wade through the garbage to get to a decent name, fairly priced.

The "virtual broker" or similar system seems like only way to make such a system work. Make Offer (unsolicited) on any name, to be brokered and the transaction escrowed by a legitimate party.

Whether, Afternic/Register.com is this "legitimate" party is disputable, but this seems to be there intention.

That and holding long expired names, held in their "unpaid names dep't" account, to be "brokered" via Afternic no doubt.

All the money is in naming companies, who actually starting the process from consultation, trademark clearance, domain clearance, etc., rather than the other way around.

Anyone know of any real high end brokerage entitites around? Similar to sedo's reported "custom" brokerage service?

[Whois-Search]

It will be on ebay with no reserve next week LOL

[adoptabledomains]

They seem to be downsizing and maybe putting the site on autopilot to me. They have farmed out closings to Escrow.com instead of their own DNEscrow service, They have constant site errors due to deleting half the features, and they are now removing all domains without activity after 30 days. You can relist names, but have to do so from scratch including categorizing and descriptions. Too tedious for a large number of names. Pretty soon 90% will be in the uncategorized list. It's also virtualy impossible to get a human or even email contact there that isn't an autoreply telling you they only answer closing questions.

[Bob]

Originally posted by adoptabledomains
It's also virtualy impossible to get a human or even email contact there that isn't an autoreply telling you they only answer closing questions.

I called and emailed every day for 2 weeks trying to get somebody. No luck. I finally transferred two names to the seller - he paid with a stolen credit card. SO I was out over $5000. Register.com called me back 2 weeks after I transferred the name explaining the situation.

Then, comically enough, 2 more weeks went by (now 6 weeks after the auction close) I got an email answering my original questions - they stated that I did not have any auctions in closings. (they had alraedy been closed and removed due to the stolen credit card).

MORONS.

-Bob

[uncle]

In all likelihood a big reason they have given up on their once excellent website is the fact they lost so many members when the dropped appraisals, forums and other once great content.

I don't think this so.

DNEscrow scams, bad service, total loss of reputation, lack of sales etc. are more likely reasons.

[pixelman]

My domains were delisted too. However, I will not go back to their site. Too troublesome to relist them all.