Gifs.com Seems To Have Sold To GifYT Startup

The premium generic domain name Gifs.com has launched a new website based on this announcement on Medium.com by Co-Founder of GifYT, Rory O’Reilly, and they have a new domain name that was not owned by the company until recently according to whois records.

Every day, GIFs are being created and used to deliver engaging content — from news, to sports, to art, to humor, gifs are used more and more. Gifs, long a mainstay of the web, have greater potential than ever before. That’s why today, we’re announcing the official launch of GIFS.com and the GIFs Player. With funding from Biz Stone, Binary, Foundation Capital, and 1517 we are bringing gifs into the 21st century.

The domain name Gifs.com was owned by Advertical Media LLC of Palm Coast Florida until the domain name recently changed to privacy protection at eNom on July 10, 2015. On August 4, 2015 name servers changed to what they are today.

Angel.co listed the company founded in 2013 with $75,000 seed funding and a valuation of $375K, under the name GifYouTube.com . A whois search for that domain name confirms it is currently owned by GifYT Co-Founder Rory O’Reilly.

To note, YouTube is a registered trademark of Google Inc.

It appears the company wisely did a name change to GifYT and also owns that matching domain name GifYT.com, which the company was using as its main domain for the services they offer. GifYT.com is still a live site and very similar to the recently launched Gifs.com.

Getty Images owns the singular version of the term, Gif.com and uses that domain name as a simple redirect to iStockphoto.com.

Estibot.com gives an appraisal of the domain name Gifs.com at $162,000 USD which does reflect the worldwide Alexa ranking of 101,000 and the 17,000 U.S. ranking which are traffic indicators for the site. Advertical Media, LLC. did have a website on the domain prior.

We did reach out to both parties for comment but have not heard back at time of publication.

Screen shot above, of Gifs.com on August 22, 2015