Continuing its strategy to enhance and move beyond website domain management, GoDaddy will acquire social media start-up company Over, according to published reports Wednesday (Jan. 29).
GoDaddy’s vice president of growth and product Justin Tsai confirmed the proposed acquisition and its focus on becoming a multimedia portal for businesses, citing “a world of entrepreneurs who may never have a website.”
“Over’s capabilities really target those set of people, who may have an Instagram profile where they need to post visually engaging content but have never gone to GoDaddy,” he told TechCrunch. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The move comes after the rebranding of “Websites+Marketing,” GoDaddy’s website-building tools suite that debuted late last year and focused on email marketing, search engine optimization, and a consistent, compelling online presence beyond a mere website.
Tsai said Websites+Marketing currently has 1 million paying customers, but, on the way to that growth, GoDaddy leadership noticed how some of those customers were having problems. “We started noticing users really had trouble creating great content as they go to those platforms. They didn’t know what to post or how to make that post really sing.”
Over is GoDaddy’s answer, presenting users with an array of templates and layouts to boost compelling content.
GoDaddy and Over initially considered a partnership, Tsai said, but those discussions led to acquisition talks when they realized how a deeper integration would be more beneficial. Over will operate out of its Cape Town, South Africa, headquarters.
Over will operate as a standalone app, though it will use Websites+Marketing, connecting, as Tsai said, “into [GoDaddy’s] insights tool to understand how different elements of [online] presence layer in together, to look at templates and how those actually help different types of small business owners.”
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