WordPress Acquires .Blog Domain For A Hefty Price
The owners of WordPress have scored a huge win for their blogging service. WordPress’ parent company, Automattic has acquired the .blog domain. While details are still being finalized, the company explained the deal in a recent post.
“Automattic — the parent company of WordPress.com — secured the rights to oversee and operate the sale and registration of .blog domains, a new and never-before available top-level domain. You’ll be able to purchase a .blog domain at WordPress.com or through our partner domain name registrars. And again, the .blog domain will be available to everyone, regardless of what kind of site you have or who hosts it.”
While Automattic is still figuring out the smaller details, such as pricing. Automattic founder, Matt Mullenweg promises that it will be reasonable and attractive for those looking for a new domain.
“Domain registration prices are still being finalized, but they will be in the standard range for new top-level domains with some premium pricing for higher-value names. The domain names will become available through traditional timeframes such as ‘sunrise’ (the period during which trademark owners can purchase domain names) and ‘landrush’ (the time in which applications can be received prior to general availability).”
Mullenweg also wrote a personal blog on the issue and explained that the company has been hard at work getting this deal finished.
“It’s now public that Automattic is the company behind Knock Knock Whois There LLC, the registry for the new .blog TLD. (And a great pun.) We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention, but nonetheless the cost of the .blog auction got up there (people are estimating around $20M). I’m excited we won and think that it will be both an amazing business going forward and give lots of folks an opportunity to have a fantastic domain name in a new namespace and with an easy-to-say TLD,” he wrote.