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CitiesPlanet.com,
the popular domain development platform
founded by longtime geodomain industry
leader Fred Mercaldo (who was
profiled in our March 2013 Cover
Story) has just signed
the largest development deal in the
company's history. Under a new contract
with iDigitialRussia.com,
CitiesPlanet and Tallwave,
the venture development company they partnered
with last year, will launch
and develop over 4,700 websites,
all aimed at the Russian market and
utilizing Russia's .RU ccTLD
extension Mercaldo,
who also serves as CEO at CitiesPlanet,
said, "This
incredible portfolio includes many category
killer domain names, along with
supportive names, in lucrative vertical
markets such as insurance, travel, legal,
clothing, employment, automotive, food,
investments, medical, shopping,
technology, jewelry, and many more." Mercaldo
added, "While
we have historically been strictly a GeoDomain
development and marketing company, we
have come to the realization that many of
our existing clients also have significant
generic portfolios in need of
development, and utilizing the expertise
that our partnership with Tallwave brings
to the table, we have now entered into
relationships where these portfolios will support
and enhance our City.com brands, and
in turn our City.com brands will enhance
the generic vertical brands we will be
building." |
Fred
Mercaldo
Founder & CEO, CitiesPlanet, Inc. |
"Tallwave
brings the expertise and experience needed to be
successful in this space, with the emphasis on
the major areas: scalability, content, and
monetization. We are very bullish on
the Russian market, and look to have our
first group of sites launched in Q3 of 2014,"
Mercaldo said.
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iDigitalRussia
Founder & CEO Toby Hardy
(left) with CitiesPlanet Founder & CEO
Fred Mercaldo on a visit to the
French Riviera
(Hardy owns FrenchRiviera.com) |
Toby
Hardy, owner of Retail Equities,
LLC and the CEO and Founder of
iDigitalRussia, Inc., is a longtime
client of CitiesPlanet with his FrenchRiviera.com
brand. Regarding the new contract to
develop his Russia-oriented portfolio
Hardy noted, “Over the past year, we
have quietly been accumulating one of the
most comprehensive and complete portfolios
of .RU names. All of the research
we have done points to explosive
growth in the Russian use of
the internet and the loyalty and
support of the .RU brand (Editor's
note: a brand that has gotten
tremendous reinforcement from the frequent
display of the Sochi.RU URL
worldwide on telecasts from the current Winter
Olympic Games underway in Russia).
"We
are convinced that our partnership with
CitiesPlanet and Tallwave will result in
positive results, including the actual partnerships
with existing businesses already in
the Russian market, who will utilize our
strong brand names in each particular
vertical,”
Hardy added. The new .RU websites
will be presented in both English and
Russian languages.
The
Tallwave and CitiesPlanet
partnership |
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is
headed up by Tallwave President Dan
Boberg who said, “We’re excited to
be working with Cities Planet and Toby
Hardy on this impressive portfolio of
Russian domains. Collectively, these
domains provide a significant opportunity
for multi-national companies to
participate in the dynamic and fast
growing Russian marketplace." |
In
a related note Mercaldo said, “We are getting
very close to launching our new software
platform for our City.com brands, and
this platform will be versatile enough to be
able to be customized for City sites that are
tourism based, along with those that will be
more hyper local. Additionally, we are
working with Tallwave to expand the platform to
be able to, on a scalable basis, launch generic
websites in specific verticals with the
emphasis on SEO, content and monetization. This
will be the very platform that will power the
4,700 .RU brands, and we are obviously very
excited about this opportunity.”
In
closing Mercaldo added, “We have already had
discussions with potential partners and
ecommerce experts that desire to enter the
Russian space. We encourage further
discussions regarding potential partnerships
as we build this network in one of the fastest
growing emerging markets in the world.
Interested partied can contact [email protected]
and/or [email protected]."
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