Tucows Introduces First Wholesale Premium Domain Name Service

By Derek Iwasiuk
DomainInformer.com
June 20, 2007

Tucows Inc., a leading provider of Internet services to web hosting companies and ISPs worldwide, has unveiled its Premium Domains service - the first such offering at thewholesale level.

Partnering with Domain Distribution Network (Fabulous.com) and NameMedia's Afternic Domain Listing Service (DLS), Tucows now offers over 600,000 premium domains for sale through its network of over 7,000 serviceproviders worldwide.

Domain names are extremely important to businesses and individuals looking to establish an Internet presence. They provide a crucial part of corporate identities and create memorable online brands that are easy tomarket and remember.

With the explosion of interest and profitability of Internet marketing, high quality descriptive domains have become a rare commodity, and as with anything rare, a market has developed to offer these assets for resale in asecondary exchange.

"The domain name market is about to undergo its greatest change since Tucows entered as the first true wholesaler in 1999," said Elliot Noss, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tucows Inc. "The addition of Premium Domains will be important for our service provider customers who excel at servicing small and medium-sized businesses, those most likely to benefit from Premium Domains. By redefining the domain search process to include names from the aftermarket, it makes it possible for people to find that perfect domainname."

Premium names are not a new idea. They have been bought and sold for the last decade. However, what has been missing until now was a simple way to connect buyers with sellers in a seamless exchange that manages the transaction in real time. Tucows has changed the market by facilitating near-instant transfers via its wholesale network. This is the start of a newera for the domain name market.

"In the past, when you wanted to transfer a domain from one registrant to another, the whole process could take days," said Adam Eisner, Product Manager for Domains, Tucows. "The real beauty of our Premium Domains service is that it gives our network of service providers a way to sell a large range of high-quality domains to their customers nearly instantly, as if they were newregistrations."

Tucows is partnering with AfternicDLS and Domain Distribution Network to enable a one-stop-shopping approach giving business users purchase access to over 600,000 premium names in a single search. Premium Domains from Tucowswill also include selections from the Tucows domain portfolio.

"As the world leader in secondary market domain names sales, NameMedia looks forward to providing Tucows customers with an unmatched breadth of domain quality and choice," said Peter Lamson, senior vice president and general manager of NameMedia's domain name marketplace. "AfternicDLS members will also benefit as we continue to expand the distribution channels for our Domain Listing Service, giving domain sellers an easy choice for where to listtheir names to get the best exposure to potential buyers."

The Domain Distribution Network believes partnering with Tucows is a winning proposition. "We're very excited to be working with Tucows," said Dan Warner, Chief Strategy Officer of Fabulous.com. "Their extensive network of resellers provides domain owners access to an untapped market of people who traditionally didn't have the capability to buy many domains which had been'off the market.'"

Visit http://services.tucows.com/services/domains/ for more information.

Elliot Noss will be discussing the domain name economy as part of a panel discussion, "Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy?" onThursday June 21, 2007 at Supernova 2007 in San Francisco, CA.