Not a Smart Start for Yahoo’s Kickstart

Yahoo recently announced the launch of Kickstart, a new social networking site.    I wanted to check it out, so I navigated to Kickstart.com, and I found a Network Solutions “Coming Soon” landing page.    Curious, I did a Whois search for Kickstart.com, and I learned that Yahoo doesn’t own this name.    It’s owned by a company called Toe-Food Chocolates, and has been owned by them since at least February of 2003.    Yahoo’s Kickstart website is actually located at kickstart.yahoo.com.    

Although this is in line with Yahoo’s other brands (http://finance.yahoo.com as an example), I think this is very shortsighted.    Perhaps Yahoo is looking in to acquiring this great generic name, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to acquire the name before launching the brand?    I can’t even imagine the amount of traffic that has been lost in the last few days. It would probably be better if Kickstart.com was a developed website so visitors would know to look elsewhere. Because of the landing page that is currently on the website, visitors may just assume the site hasn’t launched yet.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

2 COMMENTS

Leave a Reply

Recent Posts

Escrow.com Announces 2023 Master of Domains

1
During the NamesCon conference today, Escrow.com announced its Master of Domains winners. The annual award celebrates "the highest grossing domain name brokers for deals...

How to Buy a Domain Name That is Owned by Someone

1
For a domain investor, buying a domain name is second nature. Investors hand register domain names, purchase domain names via expiry and private auctions,...

My 2023 Domain Industry PMC Jersey

0
For a number of years, I have created a domain industry Pan-Mass Challenge jersey to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Many domain industry...

Chat.com Profitably Resold for 8 Figures

0
In March of this year, I reported on the sale of Chat.com. The domain name was acquired by HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah for more...

First Look at my 2023 Domain Industry PMC Jersey

1
This August, I will be riding in my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge ride to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I will be riding...