.CO

There were a number of comments critical of  Juan Diego Calle in an article I posted this morning as well as an article posted by Rick Schwartz.  Although the video Rick and I shared was primarily about LeWeb’s move from LeWeb.net to LeWeb.CO, the founder of LeWeb referred to the owner of LeWeb.com as a “squatter,” despite his having registered the domain name before LeWeb.net existed (and he successfully defended the UDRP – well, not really “defended” since it was a win without filing a response).

In response to some of the critical comments, Calle posted an article on the .CO blog entitled “How I feel about domainers.” You can read the article for yourself and post comments there, but some of the takeaways from his article include:

• Calle is a domain investor, and one of his other companies owns names like ParisHotels.com, NewYorkHotels.com, MiamiHotels.com…etc.
• Cybersquatting makes the domain industry look very bad
• There is a distinction between cybersquatting and domain investing

One issue I take with Calle’s article is the last paragraph: “if you’re a cybersquatter, or even a mass speculator, leveraging technology to register thousands of names, please do so in someone else’s backyard. ”

Some of the biggest companies in the domain investment business could be considered mass speculators. One of the most successful .CO investors stated that he  uses technology to buy domain names (“we have 150,000 names many of which a machine registered“).

I am bothered by cybersquatting as much as Calle because it does make us look bad to the general public and to people in the tech space. However, there is a big difference between cybersquatting on someone’s brand and speculating on descriptive domain names. I am sure Juan would be upset if someone filed a UDRP on one of his descriptive domain names and called him a cybersquatter simply because Juan wasn’t using it in the way that a complainant thought it should be used.

I still think the news of LeWeb switching to .CO is very big for the .CO Registry because of its audience. I do think the video backfired though.

** 5/14 Update **

Juan clarified his comments on leveraging technology to register domain names.

I want to share a video I was sent with entrepreneur Loic Le Meur of LeWeb and Juan Diego Calle of the .CO Registry. In the video, Le Meur announces LeWeb’s switch to .CO and discusses why the change was made from the .net extension where it previously resided.

If you’ve never heard of LeWeb before, it’s a “European Internet event, where 2500 entrepreneurs, leaders, investors, bloggers, journalists will gather together for 2 days in Paris. LeWeb brings together the most influential audience in the Internet ecosystem. Top industry entrepreneurs, executives, investors, senior press & bloggers gather for 2 days in Paris to focus on the key issues and opportunities in the web marketplace.”

Because of its wide reach, this is a pretty big announcement. Testimonials about the conference come from heavy hitters like Eric Schmidt and Sean Parker (Schmidt was the keynote speaker in 2011). This year, LeWeb will also be expanding to London in addition to its Paris conference.

One thing of interest is Le Meur’s discussion of LeWeb.com, as the company filed a UDRP for it in 2011 and lost. It’s a bit surprising that Le Meur called the owner a “squatter” since I believe that domain name was owned prior to LeWeb’s existence. As the panelist in the UDRP opined, ”  when a domain name is registered by the respondent before the complainant’s relied-upon trademark right is shown to have been first established (whether on a registered or unregistered basis), the registration of the domain name would not have been in bad faith“.

New landing sites of ours using premium .Co #domains: “www.Bank.co” and “www.CreditCards.co”

— Mike Mann (@mikemanndotcom) March 20, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article discussing the launch of BankAds, a “managed solution for banking and credit card domains.” In response to questions generated from people who read the article, Sean Sullivan, the founder of the company, answered quite a few questions regarding the company in the comment section of that post.

On my Twitter feed this afternoon, Mike Mann announced that his company launched two new .CO websites – Bank.CO and CreditCards.CO. When I checked the sites out, the landing pages looked like they might be BankAds designs, and Sullivan confirmed that his company is working with Mann on these two websites.  According to Sullivan, “BankAds is just now starting the process of getting Mike’s sites indexed within Google. Submitting them to webmaster tools for all serps, adding original content and later this week we will launch some other SEO initiatives”

I asked Sullivan about the launch, and he indicated that BankAds.com should be able to help deliver more revenue for Mann. “We believe that our monetization solution will prove over time to not only increase revenue for domain owners but more importantly help build greater value for the domain asset,” said Sullivan. “By taking once what was just a parked page and turning it into an informative website that features relevant information and product and service offerings, BankAds designed sites will allow domain owners to have more confidence when approaching end users when trying to sell their domain as well.”

There are a couple of reasons why I will be following the progress of these two websites. First, these two keyword terms “bank” and “credit cards” are very competitive, so we can see how well an exact match .CO will be able to compete. Second, we will see if the new BankAds platform gains traction in search engines, and we can also see how the company adds unique content and grows these two websites.

I would imagine both domain names get some type in traffic as is, and if BankAds can bring higher RPC than the traditional parking model right off the bat, Mann will make some money and BankAds might be something other domain investors should look at.

No matter what your view on .CO is, the .CO Registry has done a masterful job at marketing and promoting .CO domain names. There have been a number of mainstream articles written about the company’s presence at SXSW this past week (USA Today and CNet), and the more press for them, the better for all .CO domain owners and business owners who operate on .CO domain names.

I want to share an interview that was just posted by Tech Cocktail. If you follow .CO closely, it’s probably nothing really new for you, but Calle discusses what’s driving growth and how the company is performing.  One interesting thing I noticed is that instead of being perceived as a service provider at SXSW, it almost seems that .CO is one of the featured startups.

Jason Calacanis, a well known Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, has changed the url for his Launch Festival from Launch.is to Launch.CO. The conference is currently taking place in San Francisco, and it ends tomorrow, March 8.

This may not seem like all that big of a deal to many, but it’s a pretty big deal for the growth of the .CO Registry and I will explain why I believe this.

Calacanis is a very influential person when it comes to venture capital and the startup community. Not only has he founded and exited successfully from several startups, he also serves as a formal advisor for some and and informal role model for countless others. When Calacanis does something, people observe and take note. By shifting to a .CO for this particular conference, he is almost endorsing the extension, and I think the growth rate for adoption of .CO will come from startups who use it.

The festival is somewhat of a “celebration” of startups. One of the main purposes is for startups to pitch themselves to venture capitalists (and judges), and there is a reported $1,000,000 in financial commitments for winning companies. It’s also clearly a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet other entrepreneurs and potentially get investors for their businesses.

Even if the change to .CO isn’t particularly interesting to you, anyone interested in Internet business development would likely find the conference itself interesting. You can actually watch it live on the Launch website.

I understand that Israeli President Shimon Peres was honored at the Festival today as part of a trip focused on innovation in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco.