Companies who buy portfolios of domain names with hopes of selling advertising on them — such as iREIT, NameMedia and others — have raised several hundred million dollars in the last two years. Now some analysts think they're the next target for initial public offerings, according to The New York Times. Perhaps its an exciting thought, especially when big-ticket domain name sales like sex.com or porn.com make headlines and continue to throw off large amounts of cash. But the reality is that in many cases these businesses aren't always welcoming of public scrutiny, despite Business 2.0's efforts to cover the space. Yet, having taken private capital, many of these domain companies need to seek some form of exit, which begs the question of what they will do with the money they raise and what types of valuations these companies must achieve to score for investors. —Stacey Higginbotham
See New York Times article
See Tech Confidential blog on porn.com
See Business 2.0 article
See post from DomainNameWire (full disclosure: this post was written by the writer's husband)
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