Media company holds party for its three Austin ventures.
Social media and domain name company Demand Media, which owns domain registrar eNom, held a party in Austin last night for its three local ventures: Pluck, which it recently bought for $70 million, Livestrong.com, a partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and ExpertVillage.
The event was held at downtown nightspot Six, which is co-owned by Lance Armstrong. (Armstrong and Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt were there.)
Demand Media is mixing the world of domain names with social media, but recently it seems like there’s less focus on the domain side and more on the social media side. The company owns domain registrar eNom, and it first seemed like the company was going to mass deploy social networks across domain names, similar to how ads are mass deployed across parked domains today. It also has a marketing deal to promote .tv and let people integrate social media applications on .tv sites.
At first I was a bit skeptical, but now that the pieces are coming together it makes more sense. My concern was (is?) that social media needs hand holding — you can’t just apply it to a web property and let it take off on its own. But Demand Media has pulled in a number of pieces and is doing more than just auto-deploying social tools on domain names.
As I stood on Six’s rooftop lounge last night downing a Dos Equis, my attention was drawn to a TV showing a soccer game. A graphic was stretched across the bottom of the screen, showing the domain name Goltv.tv. Hmm. These guys might just pull it off.
Rob says
Social networking with domain names in niche markets such as real estate could work really well because such industries (like real estate) are highly people driven. Domains catering to specialized markets (geo-specific) may be a natural technology extension of a strong, localized human networking characteristic.
– Rob
tommus says
Andrew, got any pictures from the event that you want to share on here 🙂
Andrew says
@ Tommus – I took a couple pictures with my cell phone that didn’t come out well. Sorry.