Zaarly Getting Buzz at SXSW, Hopefully It Will Get Zarly or Change Its Brand Name

Elliot Silver
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ZaarlyI read an article on TechCrunch about a neat new start up that is getting considerable buzz at South By Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. Zaarly is operational only in Austin at the moment, and it lets people posts what they want/need along with a price, and others can agree to provide it for them at that price. For instance, I can post that I want a coffee from Starbucks and I am willing to pay someone $10 for it.

I can see this becoming a popular service if they’re able to work out potentially seedy issues that I could foresee coming up (ie prostitution, drugs…etc).

Seeing that the Zaarly.com domain name was just registered back in  February, I would bet the company name was fairly hastily chosen. It’s a unique name, and sounds like a cool new brand, but the problem the company will encounter is that as people spread the word, they will be helping to build traffic to Zarly.com, a domain name not owned by the company (registered in 2005).

While it doesn’t appear that Zarly.com is being used, the company needs to take some of its funding to buy it. It doesn’t need to change its name, but it should make sure it owns the obvious typo to forward that traffic back to the intended website.

Zarly.com looks like it will expire on March 31, 2011, although the owner could obviously renew it.  If the company hopes to get the name on a drop rather than trying to buy it from the owner above registration fee, company directors should be cautious. It’s likely domain investors would back order this domain name thinking about what I am discussing, and the cost would likely increase exponentially.

My advice to Zaarly is to go after Zarly.com ASAP.

Winning.com: Bandwagon Jumping on #WINNING Twitter Hashtag or Charlie Sheen Partnership?

Elliot Silver
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charlie sheenI visited Winning.com today to see what was happening on the site, and I was a bit surprised to see a Charlie Sheen  caricature and an announcement that something would be launching tomorrow (Monday, March 14, 2011).

To be precise, the Charlie Sheen-esque message on the site says, “Launching Monday 14th 3pm (LA Time…duh) Watch out Trolls!”

Winning.com appears to have been  owned by World Media Group, LLC up until it went private today. World Media Group is a  company that owns domain names like World.com, Paris.com, London.com, Asia.com, Doctor.com, and many other descriptive domain names.

I am wondering whether the domain owner is jumping on the #WINNING Twitter hashtag popularized in the last week or so by Charlie Sheen, or if the company is partnering with Sheen on a new venture.

As mentioned by Sheen on Friday, he and his legal team were able to acquire CharlieSheen.com “after years of being at the mercy of a decaying troll.” Perhaps they were able to buy (or lease) Winning.com. It’s also possible that the World Media Group is going to set up something to follow the #WINNING hashtag posts on Twitter.

I suppose we’ll see in just over 24 hours.

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Cleveland Browns File UDRP for Browns.com

Elliot Silver
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Despite the uncertainty surrounding the current labor situation in the National Football League, the Cleveland Browns have filed a UDRP for the Browns.com domain name.  The cellar-dwelling Browns, who finished 5-11 last season, use ClevelandBrowns.com for its website.

Browns.com has been owned by a registrant in Italy for a number of years. The Whois History results for this domain name go back to 2003, and it appears to me that it’s been owned by the same entity. At the moment, Browns.com does not resolve.

It does look like there might have been football-related links on the domain name at one point, although the owner may not have control over what links were displayed. I find it strange that the football team has taken so long to file a UDRP for the name though, since they must have known another entity has owned it for so many years.

FaceTime.com Now Owned By Apple Ahead of Wednesday’s Event

Elliot Silver
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Apple FaceTime

Many technology blogs and Apple fans are looking forward to the Apple event scheduled for tomorrow in San Francisco. It is widely speculated that the event will be the venue for an  announcement  about the newest version of the Ipad.

Some people have speculated that the IPad 2 may have a camera, which would likely enable Apple’s “FaceTime.” FaceTime is a popular application that allows video calls on the iPhone 4, the newest version of the iPod touch, and Mac computer to Mac computer using a wifi connection.

I just received a tip that in the last couple of days, it appears that Apple has taken possession of the FaceTime.com domain name. According to a Whois lookup as recently as February 20, 2011, FaceTime.com was owned by a company called FaceTime Communications, Inc.

As of this afternoon, the Whois information now shows Apple, Inc. as the current domain registrant for FaceTime.com. The domain name does not yet resolve to Apple’s website, so if you want to learn about FaceTime, you need to visit www.apple.com/mac/facetime.

I don’t have any idea if FaceTime.com will be a part of tomorrow’s Apple announcement, but the timing of the Whois change is interesting.

Thanks for this tip goes to to Mark over at SpreadOffense.com.

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Xoom Goes After Motorola

Elliot Silver
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Xoom LogoA couple years ago, I blogged about the company called Xoom, a money transfer service with a name that I think is pretty bad. It sounds like “zoom,” and is spelled differently. I didn’t and still don’t understand why a company would choose to have a confusing brand name.

It was even more surprising to me a few months ago when Motorola announced that it’s  tablet computer was going to be called Xoom (which went on sale today).  This was a head scratcher to me because “Xoom” seems like a made up term rather than a descriptive term.  I also can’t understand why a big company like Motorola couldn’t think of a better name and/or why they would take a risk of potentially infringing on another company’s brand name.

As you might expect, this has turned litigious. According to an article on Bloomberg this morning, the money transfer company has sued Motorola for trademark infringement. The case was filed in US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

Name.com Contest Contestants

Elliot Silver
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Name.comI want to share with you the 5 finalists for the Valentine’s Day domain name poetry contest sponsored by Name.com. The winner will receive a $250 credit from Name.com, which can be used to buy domain names as well as renew them. Thanks to Name.com for sponsoring this fun contest.

If you submitted a video and it’s not listed here, please post it in the comment section of this article ASAP. The winner will be chosen by Paul and Ashley at Name.com, and I will announce it sometime on Monday afternoon.

Thank you to all who participated!

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