Although they don’t consider themselves domainers, Marchex owns thousands of domain names, and the company is one of the few publicly traded domain-related companies. This morning, Marchex announced that the company is laying off 15 employees, about 4% of its workforce.

They also announced a couple of senior management changes, naming Peter Christothoulou Chief Operating Officer and Matthew Berk Executive Vice President of Product Engineering.  In November, Mike Berkens blogged about Marchex and how it’s market cap was just slightly more than the total amount they paid for Yun Yee’s portfolio. While the stock price has increased since Mike’s post, the economy is still taking a toll on the company.

I returned to New York last night after spending a week in California visiting Burbank and attending DomainFest Global.  It always seems that each domain conference is better than the previous conference I attended.  This can certainly be said about DFG. Aside from the panels (which were good), the networking opportunities were phenomenal – both during conference time set up for networking and during the parties in the evening. Believe it or not, I even had several great discussions at the Playboy Mansion (all involving domains and development… get your mind out of the gutter, friends!)

I don’t typically attend all of the panels, but the few I attended had good information and dialogue. Typically at domain conferences, I maximize my time meeting colleagues, introducing friends, and learning about what others are doing to increase the value of their domain names and generate revenue from them. The atmosphere and layout at DFG was great for individual meetings and discussions involving several people. There were a few times in the exhibition area where people from different backgrounds had great conversations just by happenstance because we were sitting on adjacent couches.

Some people who didn’t attend are going to look at the results of the domain auction and possibly consider it a low point for domain owners.  I disagree with this view for a couple of reasons.  Even in tough times, close to a million dollars in domain names were purchased.  Sellers don’t have the need to drop their prices and give away their names.  This shows some strength, as weakness would be indicated by great domain names being listed at very low reserves, as domain owners need to sell ASAP. This just isn’t the case, and owners of good domain names aren’t looking to sell them in a down market.

This was the best domain conference I have attended so far, and it is a tribute to the hard work of everyone at Oversee.net who oversaw a great show.  Even in difficult times, amid lowering revenues and layoffs, the team at Oversee pulled through and gave us a great conference.