A company which re-branded to a .Com in March, from a .Org, has purchased an .XYZ domain name from a domainer and re-branded to an .XYZ domain name.
According to its site, “Engage, is a division of INHS, is one of the largest MEDITECH hosting partners in the United States.
With 20 years of extensive MEDITECH experience, Engage provides a wide range of infrastructure solutions including hardware refresh, virtualization, data migration, data center migration and implementation. Engage leverages strong relationships with BridgeHead Software, IBM, HP, and NetApp to deliver fully tested and certified MEDITECH solutions. As one of MEDITECH’s largest hosting partners, Engage hosts and operates large MEDITECH environments including the integration of the wide range of applications typically found in a hospital environment.”
Engage was operating on a subdomain at engage.inhs.org
inhs.org has an original creation date of 1997.
In March of this year the company bought the domain, and re-branded to ThinkEngage.com (price is unknown)
At the end of September the company bought the domain name Engage.XYZ for $5,700 from domain investor Syed Mairaj.
The purchase and rebranding to the .XYZ took place after Google announced its Alphabet holding company domain name was going to be abc.xyz
As you can see from the company’s site on ThinkEngage.com, which is still operational (So is the .org subdomain for that matter) you will see that the contact information they are using is Engage.XYZ
The company’s Facebook page (ThinkEngage) also reflects their re-branding to Engage.XYZ as their URL.
I reached out to the company for comment who promised me something was forthcoming but three days later we have not received the comment so publish this post without it.
Congrats to Syed on a nice sale on a domain name he registered for
This is newsworthy … precisely because it’s abnormal.
Every day brands upgrade their domain, often shortening the address, often migrating to a different TLD. When the new TLD is .COM, .NET, or .ORG, that isn’t news. That’s expected to be happening all the time.
Freak events ought to be reported just like this – with headlines and full-page posts. If .XYZ ever becomes mainstream, then nobody will write articles like this one. But right now, this is as it should be.
To be clear, isn’t the reason it’s abnormal because good, short, brandable domain names can’t be registered for anything remotely close to the low cost of many new gTLDs, including .xyz. As someone who was once extorted by someone who was sitting on my ecommerce websites trademarked domain name, and claimed to developing a website for 5 years meanwhile sending me an email every month lowering his price from $250K to 200K to 150K to 100K….I just found another domain that was a slight modification of my actual company name and frankly had much better organic search rankings traffic than a well established player with 1000x more revenue than we had. Why wouldn’t it become mainstream for people to register .xyz? If you want engage.com, you have to pay someone a lot of money for it because there’s perceived value related to .com. The reality is, it is an undescriptive extension that many people use, but don’t most people just search in the browser bar for what they’re looking for anyway? The domain name is virtually irrelevant when compared to the quality of the website, etc. Why wouldn’t search results actually reward people for using more descriptive gTLDs in the future. If I register the site engage.news, then it’s pretty clear what type of content you’re going to expect to find on my site. I’m confused why anyone cares about .com, and certainly confused why anyone would pay more than a nominal premium over what you could get a more descriptive domain extension for that qualifies your websites purpose, or even a generic one like .xyz, that frankly is probably more memorable at this point given the ratio of .com vs. .xyz websites I’m exposed to on a daily basis. remember when companies were tacking .com onto their name before going public to get an extra pop for the internet association? Most of those companies don’t even exist anymore – I frankly have more of a negative connotation associated with the meaning of “dot com.” I assume anyone who owns.com domains with the intention of monetizing them for ad traffic / mistyped keywords is no longer successful in making much money, and anyone looking to sell them for a big profit on the secondary market is speculating about as much as the tulip craze. Your website design matters about 1000x more than your website name in my opinion.
Sorry – I should say “the domain name *extension * is virtually irrelevant when compared to the quality of the website, etc” what comes before the extension is important of course if the whole goal is to be differentiated in search results or mindshare. frankly, that goal is also maybe better served by xyz than com given one is unique and one is as plain vanilla as it gets. I’d be very scared to have my net worth tied up in a few domain names that i was waiting for someone to make me a big offer on with no intention of building a website or why the name might be unique for someone else to build a website on.
@Ben,
The carriage return is our friend.
A brand transitioning to a new identity is hardly a freak event. It’s newsworthy today because new TLDs are still young in the market, and I disagree that it’s newsworthy because it’s abnormal. Over time, this industry trend will keep gaining steam and we’ll see more of this happening.
@Connor,
If this were a normal occurrence, then it would scarcely be reported.
Since it is reported, isn’t that because it stands out as a freak event?
Next step: purchase enga.ge – the shortest URL possible.
I think this is a great move.
the fact that you are stooping so low as to ‘report’ a story such as this further proves how much you have sold out. We used to respect you Mike.
this is barely newsworthy as they sound very very confused as to what they want to be branded as at all, let alone a .xyz, an .online or a .confused.
ThinkEngage was a horrible name also so let’s please be honest, they don’t seem to have a clue about naming.
This just seems like another post about some BS extension that means nothing.
Should .GL be hailed as another amazing idea because of Goo.gl
please
we miss ya mike… whenever you’re done tootin’ this GARBAGE, please make sure you blog about sorry you are for your past two hundred something posts.
sad, really
I don’t believe Michael Berkens has sold out.
Personally, I’m not a fan of .XYZ; but part of my job consists of researching the domain market. So any data on domain sales or rebranding decisions – even bad decisions – is something I appreciate hearing about.
Silly, sack the marketing director. Why not hold & wait or register the Chinese version
ThinkEngage.com was not a good domain to start with, so the migration to Engage.xyz is not a big deal. What is surprising is how much they paid for the domain.
Sam
Like anything else I publish it because I think its interesting.
I don’t know who you think I sold out to .xyz since I own about 20 .xyz domains out of 80K domain names and as you can see they have never advertised on thedomains, not even buying a lousy $500 spot on the ticker.
On the other hand after I published a negative story that Minds + Machines didn’t like they pulled their ads and they were spending $x,xxx a quarter.
Guess I pretty bad at selling out
That’s why readers including myself like and visit your blog.
lol
This is an interesting story.
Of course, the success of new TLDs probably won’t rely on existing businesses switching from .com. Rather, it seems many of them will supplement their dot-com with a descriptive new string that helps identify their products or services, and use that domain in marketing. I agree with the others that this particular business seems to have completely abandoned its dot-com because it just wasn’t a very memorable selection. I think new gTLDs will be widely used among big businesses, in addition to start-ups, but this doesn’t seem indicative of the rationale.
Totally agree – it’s so hilarious to listen to people who can’t stop drinking the .com coolaid talk about how bad new gTLDs are. definitely feels like a get on the bus or get run over type situation.
Sam,
Say hello to Ernie, Diane, & Norm for me please.
Thanks!
Who funded it?
I hope it is not XYZ registry.
Krishna, why would xyz registry funded, the deal got closed via domainagents broker company,
Xyzzzzz is the future wait and watch
Engage.xyz was a good alternative. Disregard the xyz haters, in their minds they believe .com is the only option. Which is crazy because who wants to pay six figures for the com version or hell anything remotely similar. 5Grand is a deal, especially now, you wait any longer for these premium names they will be asking for more.
“Disregard the xyz haters, in their minds they believe .com is the only option.”
Nonsense. Half my portfolio consists of non-.COM domains, including 2000+ nTLD domains. I’ll be building websites on .COM, .NET, .ORG, as well as nTLD domains.
Yet I still dislike .XYZ for the most part.
I’d recommend .BIZ to a client ahead of .XYZ. At least .BIZ is 1 syllable instead of 3.
So this statement can’t be taken seriously in the least:
“Disregard the xyz haters, in their minds they believe .com is the only option.”
Are people so lazy nowadays that three syllables over one, will totally brain drain them? You put too much into it buddy. Sorry!
The pertinent point about Joseph Peterson’s comment may have brain drained you, Rouba, but DOT-EX-WHY-ZEE (or DOT-EX-WHY-ZED for other English speakers) is a real mouthful compared to DOT-BIZ or DOT-COM.
.xyz is also an irrelevant string. It has nothing to do with anything. It doesn’t try to hide this fact, I’m not suggesting otherwise, but it is obvious to most when looking at a .xyz domain in use that they’ve settled on the cheaper option. And by cheaper I mean “available.”
The best example I can give is Google. Alphabet.com was obviously taken, so they had to think outside the box. The reason such a large company went for a .xyz domain is why everybody was jumping for joy – because it sort of (in their minds) gave the .xyz string a shred of credibility where it was otherwise a credibility free zone.
The final point – and it’s richly ironic – is how many commenters on here and elsewhere bemoan the high cost of .com domains over .xyz domains. Nobody is prepared to stop and realise that the reason they are so valuable is because .com domains are pertinent through years of familiarity and hence they are sought after.
xyz domains aren’t. That’s why .xyz domains are cheap.
(Apart from it would seem engage.xyz which was sold way over the odds in my opinion!)
That said, I have more hope for some of the new gtlds like .news because they are simple, pertinent, memorable and actually mean something.
I believe it’s a relevant story. Interesting how a domain goes from being worth $57 to $5,700 after Google uses it. Because of Google there are going to be many more stories like this about .XYZ in the future. Not a fan though. You gotta hand it to the guy for getting $5,700 for a crappy domain. This is the only business in the world that you can ask so much for something that isn’t worth that at all.
I meant ask and get.
Wake up toddy boy.
How many times do we see crappy com sell for $35,000, 100,000 or $15,000 too many! 75% are not worth it, about time things changed around here!
Well that’s just the thing here many do not see, there is like hardly any coms available , so domainers make $$$ off of laughable names, which is fine, but why not pay something similar on an actual premium name. I see this not just for .xyz, I see it for some of the upcoming ones too. If society wants to go that path then why not.
Some will say xyz doesn’t sound or fit right, I had the same feeling with .com when I started using the internet. When I saw .com, I thought of an actual file extension, .com, example command.com. So for me it took some time, so maybe im not seeing it the way you guys are.
After Google’s move on abc.xyz, its newsworthy and has been re-tweeted 28 times already so people are interested.
If anyone is not its OK
Wonder why Engage.xyz hasn’t spent $5700 on its website. Its app hasn’t received enough installs to get any ratings/reviews, and its most recent comments occurred in 2013
Looks like one of those sites you put up in 2 hrs, either free or less than $100.
$5700 on the domain, engage.xyz. OK, if they say so 🙂
Steve
As I said its the same site as that is still on ThinkEngage.com and the .org subdomain