Domisfera

Domisfera wanted to know more about the real state of SnapNames, so asked for an interview with Mason Cole. This is the result, if they are enough and relevant questions and comments from the readers, Domisfera will make a second interview.

(1) What is your full name? Where do you come from?

Mason Cole.  I’ve been with SnapNames for six years.  Prior to that I was a partner at a marketing agency.

(2) What is your position and daily work in SnapNames? How is any day for you in the firm?

I oversee industry relations as well as our partnerships with registrars.

(3) What did you do before working in SnapNames?, How do you begin in the domaining world? 

At first I was in the financial services industry.  I then moved into technology marketing and was a partner at a marketing and public relations agency.  SnapNames was my client at that agency, and I left to work inside the company.  When I first arrived here, my primary role was publishing State of the Domain, an industry newsletter.

(4) SnapNames was launched in April of the year 2.000, How did this idea come up? 

Our co-founders were interested in a domain name that had already been registered, and they created a script to query its status periodically.  They thought the idea would be applicable to others who were interested in obtaining certain names when they became available.

(5) How many people are working now in SnapNames?

38

(6) Obviously everything is automated, but Could you tell us how is managed internally by SnapNames the backorder process?

Yes, everything is pretty well automated.  However, we have partnerships with more than a dozen registrars who provide to us, exclusively, their expiring domain names which are then made available to our customers for purchase.  Separate from that, we also have a network of more than 300 accreditations which we use to secure names as they delete from the registry.

(7) How may customers has SnapNames so far? 

Over the course of our company’s life, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of customers.

(8) SnapNames has 7 years of experience in this business. Could you tell us exactly how many domains have been seized by SnapNames until now? and how many have escaped from SnapNames?, What is your percentage of success now? 

Success percentage varies by day, but we easily get at least 75% of names we pursue.

(9) With how many Registrars has SnapNames agreements? 

See above.

(10) Is the SnapNames system of backorders debugged fully or is it in continuous evolution? Is it possible to improve it?

I can’t talk further about our technology.

(11) If you have more agreements with Agents of ICANN, you have more chances of catching domains, but it is said  that sometimes there are SnapNames competitors (Enom, Pool…) have more chances depending on Registrar… Why is this so influential? 

It depends more on whether or not there is an order for a particular name at one service instead of another.  eNom may have better success in getting a name because the same customer didn’t order the name with us.  On the whole, we outperform our competition.

(12) How many money do you pay to the Registrar for the slots leasing to catch domains?

Terms of our business arrangements are confidential.

(13) What opinion deserves to you the domain kiting? One of your direct competitors, Pool, offers the service Catch & Release, Will Snapnames offer something like this?

We don’t spend much time thinking about it.

(14) Many people say that you have the best system of backorders, Which are for you your most direct competitors: Enom-Demand Media-Club Drop, Pool, Godaddy…?

ENom and Pool, probably.

(15) Could you tell me the amount of sales (backorders and auctions) that SnapNames had in 2006?

Sorry, no.

(16) You are focused in few extensions (.com, .net, .info, .biz, .org, .de and .co.uk), will you expand? your offer?, and will you translate your interface to another languages?

We do plan to do this in the future, yes.