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How Major Brands Are Adopting Branded Short Links

Rightside made a very generous contribution to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a part of my 2016 Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising campaign in exchange for the publication of this article.

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On February 14th, Etsy announced the launch of Etsy Studio in a social post. While Etsy.studio certainly would be a great, memorable domain for their project’s primary website, as Elliot previously suggested, Etsy has at least made an excellent decision to start using the domain on social media. In fact, Etsy is just one of many brands and individuals utilizing a new wave of Branded Short Links.

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A Branded Short Link is a URL that is, as the name suggests, both

Etsy Gets Etsy.Studio But Uses EtsyStudio.com

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Etsy StudioIn a tweet this afternoon arts and crafts marketplace Etsy announced that it would be launching a new marketplace for craft supplies called Etsy Studio. Fast Company published an article about this new marketplace earlier today. The article offered a glimpse into the company’s plans for  Etsy Studio, which is expected to  open for business in April of this year.

When I saw the tweet about Etsy Studio, my first thought was about the Etsy.Studio  domain name that was referenced. I then thought about  whether or not the company is going to use that new gTLD domain name for its website. I visited Etsy.Studio  and saw that Etsy.Studio forwards to EtsyStudio.com. Social media for this new marketplace (Pinterest) appears to confirm that the company intends to use EtsyStudio.com and not Etsy.Studio for its website. I would imagine they will continue using Etsy.Studio for social sharing though.

The .Studio domain name extension is operated by Rightside. As of today, there are over 21,000 registered .Studio domain names, according to nTLDStats.com.

In my opinion, Rightside

Logan.Movie in a Super Bowl Commercial

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The greatest Super Bowl game in my lifetime was played last night. As a New England Patriots fan, I am clearly biased, but that was an amazing comeback. For some people, the Super Bowl was all about the television commercials.

Admittedly, I paid little attention to the Super Bowl commercials during the game, but I did notice one new gTLD domain name used in commercials for a new movie called Logan. Fox chose to use the Logan.Movie domain name in its commercial.

If you visit Logan.Movie, you are forwarded to a page within the Fox website advertising the movie. The matching .com domain name, LoganMovie.com, is owned by a company called Logan Luxury Theatres based in South Dakota. I wonder how much extra traffic that domain name saw during the Super Bowl. Logan.com is owned by another entity, which has “Loganberry Books” at the top of the website.

I counted 10 movie trailers shown during the Super Bowl. I looked through them all this morning, and I only see the one .Movie domain name. Interestingly,

Key Bank Using Key.Insurance for Email

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Screen Shot 2017-02-02 at 9.37.18 AMA friend of mine from my days at AIG alerted me to something I found interesting. Key Bank is using the Key.Insurance domain name for email. They Key.Insurance domain name was registered in July of 2016. It looks like their main insurance portal is found at Key.com/insurance.

There were a few things I found interesting with this:

It does not look like Key Bank is using the Key.Insurance domain name for a website. When I visited Key.Insurance and www.Key.Insurance, I was taken to an ISP error page. It is interesting that the company would use its .Insurance domain name for email but not for an active website. It is possible that the company is using its .Insurance domain name for a website that I can’t see. For instance, there could be some sort of intranet website on a subdomain name or something along those lines.

Key Bank does not own

.Club Sells $150k Worth of Names in First Week of Broker Program

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Dot ClubDuring NamesCon, the .Club registry announced its new  Broker Program and interest-free financing plans to help sell .Club domain names. Konstantinos of OnlineDomain.com wrote about this news in an article published a week ago.

In a press release announcing this news, here’s what the registry had to say:

“As we enter a new year, .CLUB continues to innovate new ways to make our brandable premium names accessible to entrepreneurs and small businesses. We were the first to offer financing to select registrants under our Startup Club program, which successfully incubated businesses such as Coffee.club and Soap.club. Now we are expanding the opportunity by offering Registry-backed financing for all premium names sold directly by the Registry and priced at $1,000 or more. With 60-month, interest free financing, that $1,000 name can be had for less than $17/month. For businesses and entrepreneurs, great 5 and 6-figure premium names become much more attainable when payments are spread out over 5 years. You can search for and purchase premium .CLUB names, with a one-time payment or with 60-month financing, at www.get.club.”

This afternoon, .Club registry CMO Jeff Sass shared that the registry sold a hair under $150,000 worth of .Club domain names in its first week offering these programs. This translates into

NamesCon Sponsor Spotlight on .Club

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Dot ClubNamesCon 2017 is on track for another record-breaking year! People from all facets of the domain industry have already started networking on the NamesCon mobile app and are getting ready to head to Las Vegas in less than two weeks. Tickets are still available for purchase to those wishing to attend the largest domain name conference in the world. The conference is held at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from January 22-25, 2017.

We are running these interviews to introduce attendees to NamesCon sponsors, and to get to know the people behind the banners. Today’s Spotlight interview is with  Jeffrey Sass, CMO at .CLUB Domains, LLC.

What is your company’s mandate; what sets you apart?

Unlike many of the new domain extension registries, we are solely focused on one word, .CLUB, and from the beginning, we have approached things from the perspective of building a global brand that anyone with a passion can relate to. As a domain extension .CLUB is unique because its usage is truly global. The word “club,” in English, is recognized, used and means the same thing all over the world and across multiple languages. The other thing that is special about “club” is that it represents community and people coming together around a common interest or passion. This makes .CLUB easy to understand as a domain and meaningful for a broad range of uses, from existing clubs, to sports figures and celebrities for their fan clubs, to startups with membership and subscription models, to bloggers who are passionate about a particular topic, and on and on and on.

Who benefits from your product or service?

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