Did Salesforce.com acquire Work.com domain name?
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
A bunch of signs point to “yes”.
Last week I spotted a change in the whois record for work.com that makes me think Work.com has sold and changed hands. Now there may be a clue about the buyer.
On March 9, I discovered that the whois for Work.com changed from Business.com (the old? owner) to a whois privacy service.
Normally no big deal, except that the domain name had been listed in Moniker’s last live domain auction.
Today it surfaces that Salesforce.com bought Site.com a few weeks ago.
Here’s where things get interesting. First, look at the whois for Site.com:
Now the whois for Work.com:
Look similar?
There are more reasons to think Salesforce.com is the buyer. Remember, Salesforce bought Data.com through Moniker. It also apparently ended up the buyer of Social.com, which was also auctioned by Moniker. So there’s a deep relationship there.
And the TechCrunch article about the Salesforce.com debut of Site.com discusses how the company is getting in to human capital management. Work.com is a great domain for that.
A bunch of coincidences? I don’t think so.
Nice sleuthing, Andrew!
It would be great to try to get an interview with their domain/brain team, as they really have a keen sense of “quality” in their purchases, compared to some corporations. Of course, they might decline interviews until *after* they’ve finished their stealth buying spree!
Oops, I meant *branding* team (not “brain” team).
Looks like it was SaleForce.com that launched Desk.com recently as a mobile helpdesk solution The whois shows that the domain went from moniker to privacy to network solutions late 2011 . Impressive acquisitions and great ideas for building complimentary cross sell products and brands so quickly.
March 1, 2012 I had noticed Site.com likely sold
I just wasn’t sure who the buyer was and the seller wouldn’t reply to my emails. (Tiny Tidbit in this article http://www.dotweekly.com/what-will-google-showy-be/ )
Also to note: Work.com had a $1 Million-$5 Million price range in the DomainFest auction.
Check out this article on salesforce’s new products. Several new domains mentioned.
http://www.dailydisruption.com/2012/03/salesforce-com-announces-two-new-products-to-reach-every-employee-and-every-customer/
@ JDhiller – I only see Site.com. Am I missing something?
DM News has an article today (dated yesterday) on Site.com. Pretty good article.