In November 2021, Andrew Allemann confirmed the news that Bird.com had sold.
The valuable domain appeared to have sold at auction earlier in 2021 for $2.5 million, but that sale fell through, resulting in legal action.
Regardless, the domain’s owner seemingly got a significant payday from the domain, with broker Monte Cahn suggesting that Bird.com’s sales price was “one of the biggest sales of last year and of all time.”
The domain was acquired by MessageBird, a Dutch communications platform that has raised $1.1 billion in funding since launching in 2011, including a mammoth $800 million round in April 2021.
As of publishing, MessageBird’s plans for the Bird.com domain are unknown, but I’ve found evidence to suggest that the company will be rebranding to simply Bird.
A filing discovered at WIPO shows that MessageBird has filed a trademark for Bird, covering the same classifications as the company’s original MessageBird trademark.
The Bird trademark was filed at the beginning of December 2021, just after the company completed the purchase of Bird.com.
This would suggest that MessageBird is going to rebrand to Bird at some point in the future, likely transitioning from MessageBird.com to Bird.com in the process.