It appears that Facebook acquired Messenger.com recently. Checking the name servers and the whois data for Messenger.com, there was a recent change to the name servers: from lovellsnames.org to facebook.com, and the registrant is now Facebook.
Michael Berkins recently first pointed this out, but it looks more and more that they did acquire messenger.com. I’m wondering what they’re planning on doing with it?
Take a look at the current whois record:
Domain Name: MESSENGER.COM Registry Domain ID: 2341650_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: Registrar URL: Updated Date: 2014-11-12T07:55:11Z Creation Date: 1998-11-04T05:00:00Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-11-03T05:00:00Z Registrar: Hogan Lovells International LLP Registrar IANA ID: 1526 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected] Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +33.153672291 Reseller: Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited - http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Registry Registrant ID: Registrant Name: Domain Administrator Registrant Organization: Facebook, Inc. Registrant Street: 1601 Willow Road, Registrant City: Menlo Park Registrant State/Province: CA Registrant Postal Code: 94025 Registrant Country: US Registrant Phone: +1.6505434800 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: +1.6505434800 Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: [email protected] Registry Admin ID: Admin Name: David TAYLOR Admin Organization: Hogan Lovells (Paris) LLP Admin Street: 17 avenue Matignon Admin City: Paris Admin State/Province: Ile-de-France Admin Postal Code: 75008 Admin Country: FR Admin Phone: +33.153674747 Admin Phone Ext: Admin Fax: +33.153674748 Admin Fax Ext: Admin Email: [email protected] Registry Tech ID: Tech Name: Domain Administrator Tech Organization: Facebook, Inc. Tech Street: 1601 Willow Road, Tech City: Menlo Park Tech State/Province: CA Tech Postal Code: 94025 Tech Country: US Tech Phone: +1.6505434800 Tech Phone Ext: Tech Fax: +1.6505434800 Tech Fax Ext: Tech Email: [email protected] Name Server: b.ns.facebook.com Name Server: a.ns.facebook.com DNSSEC: unsigned URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/ >>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2014-11-13T18:07:20Z If you look back at the archive.org history, the site, as recently as last February, was redirected to videos.com: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://messenger.com According to Whoisology, the messenger.com domain name was recently also in privacy:Name Private Registration|Account Privacy (2,600) (+120) Org. - Email proxy.messenger.com@accountpri (1) Street 1 4465 W. Gandy Blvd., Suite 801 (4,970) (+93) Street 2 - City Tampa (222,411) (-4,564) Region FL (4,836,664) (+2,277,820) Zip / Post 33611 (13,458) (+7) Country UNITED STATES (77,145,851) (-995,651) Phone 18138378000 (4,954) (+93) Fax 18138378000 (4,380) (+71)And as of today, the messenger.com domain name now is associated with Facebook. I have reached out to Hogan Lovells to see if they have an more info on this acquisition, but to me everything points to Facebook having acquired messenger.com recently, especially since we're now seeing the name servers change, and based on what TheDomains previously reported.