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

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Andrew Miller Turns Random Sunday Thoughts into LinkedIn Newsletter

0
Andrew Miller has been sharing a regular post on LinkedIn each week called Random Sunday Thoughts. In each Sunday morning edition, Andrew has shared...

Icon.com Acquired for $12 Million

1
Icon.com was recently acquired for $12 million, according to a LinkedIn post from the startup’s Founder, Kennan Davison. The domain name is being used...

DropCatch Auctions No Longer Close on Weekends

0
I wrote about the Mine.com auction on DropCatch.com earlier today. One of the things that stood out to me is the five day auction....

Mine.com in Pending Delete Auction

2
As I was looking through the upcoming pending delete auctions, I was caught by surprise by an exceptionally valuable domain name. Mine.com went into...

Check Price History on Acquired Domain Names

2
Timing is critical with domain name sales. I may have a domain name for 10 years, let it expire, see it picked up by...