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My Next Venture – Is it Crap?

Elliot Silver
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14

There’s nothing like starting out on a new venture that is going to be huge. This is really going to leave a mark on the world. Since leaving my corporate job, I’ve been looking for a project that will leave me satisfied. I thought I had that with my developed geodomain names, but alas, these are nothing compared to my newest project, which has really moved me.

I know this may make me the butt of your jokes, and some of you may pooh-pooh this idea, but I do – do not care that you may think it stinks. This has been brewing for months, but I feel like its finally ready to be released.

Together with the help of a few friends, I am set to push out FecalPhotos.com, a website dedicated to crappy photos and all sorts of shit like that. A friend of mine owns RateMyShit.com, and I think these two ventures go hand in hand. I will soon travel to the bowels of this country to meet with him in New Jersey, and hopefully we can work together on a successful venture.

Yes… I am shitting you. This foul idea was brewed up over a few beers and I decided to post it (in poor taste). Enjoy your weekend and be safe.

Do Sports Teams Get Domain Names?

Elliot Silver
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6

NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL

I want to examine whether American professional sports teams seem to value generic domain names for their websites. Surprisingly, there are a whole host of sports teams that do not own the exact keyword .com domain name of their brand, even though they are losing a considerable amount of traffic as a result. I searched NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL team websites, and I found that National Basketball Association teams own the most team name.com domain names, and National Hockey League teams owns the least.

Since most sports team names are very generic, they are expensive to acquire. However, losing ticket sales and team memorabilia/collectibles revenue (or having to pay a commission for them) should be incentive enough to spend the money to buy these domain names, as evidenced by the purchase of Bobcats.com by the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats last year.

By nature, American Internet users seem to default to the .com domain name when looking for a specific brand, and that holds true for sports teams. This can be witnessed by examining the public stats of generic sports domain names during the season. For example, Dolphins.com seems to spike at the beginning of the football season and then in the middle, even though the Miami Dolphins didn’t own the domain name until a recent UDRP filing that was Suspended.

It’s interesting to note that it doesn’t appear that the league or team values have anything to do with the acquisition of generic .com domain names. The Dallas Cowboys are one of the three most valuable American professional sports franchises. Yet they weren’t willing to pay $275,000 for their generic .com domain name when it was up for auction (which is a story in and of itself).

According to reports in Forbes Magazine, the approximate combined value of teams in each league were: NFL: $30.6 billion, MLB: $14.5 billion, NBA: $11.4 billion,   and NHL: $6.6 billion. This doesn’t parallel the % of teams that own their own .com domain name, although the least valuable league does own the least amount of .com domain names.

Percentage of teams that own their .com team name:
NBA: 76.7%
MLB: 73.3%
NFL: 53.1%
NHL: 26.7%

National Hockey League Teams – Do they own team name .com?
Buffalo Sabres Yes
Carolina Hurricanes No
Colorado Avalanche No
Columbus Blue Jackets No
Dallas Stars No
Detroit Red Wings No
Edmonton Oilers No
Florida Panthers No
Los Angeles Kings No
Minnesota Wild Yes
Montreal Canadiens Yes
Nashville Predators No
New Jersey Devils No
New York Islanders No
New York Rangers No
Ottawa Senators Yes
Philadelphia Flyers No
Phoenix Coyotes No
Pittsburgh Penguins No
San Jose Sharks No
St. Louis Blues No
Tampa Bay Lightning No
Toronto Maple Leafs Yes
Vancouver Canucks Yes
Washington Capitals No

National Basketball League Teams – Do they own team name .com?
Atlanta Hawks Yes
Boston Celtics Yes
Charlotte Bobcats Yes
Chicago Bulls Yes
Cleveland Cavaliers No
Dallas Mavericks No
Denver Nuggets Yes
Detroit Pistons Yes
Golden State Warriors Yes
Houston Rockets Yes
Indians Pacers Yes
LA Clippers Yes
LA Lakers Yes
Memphis Grizzlies Yes
Miami Heat Yes
Milwaukee Bucks Yes
Minnesota Timberwolves Yes
New Jersey Nets No
New Orleans Hornets Yes
New York Knicks Yes
Oklahoma City Thunder No
Orlando Magic No
Philadelphia 76ers Yes
Phoenix Suns Yes
Portland Trail Blazers Yes
Sacramento Kings Yes
San Antonio Spurs Yes
Toronto Raptors Yes
Utah Jazz No
Washington Wizards No

National Football League Teams – Do they own team name .com?
Arizona Cardinals No
Atlanta Falcons No
Baltimore Ravens No
Buffalo Bills No
Carolina Panthers Yes
Chicago Bears No
Cincinnati Bengals Yes
Cleveland Browns No
Dallas Cowboys No
Denver Broncos No
Detroit Lions No
Green Bay Packers Yes
Houston Texans No
Indianapolis Colts Yes
Jacksonville Jaguars Yes
Kansas City Chiefs No
Miami Dolphins Yes
Minnesota Vikings Yes
New England Patriots Yes
New Orleans Saints No
New York Giants Yes
New York Jets No
Oakland Raiders Yes
Philadelphia Eagles No
Pittsburgh Steelers Yes
San Diego Chargers Yes
San Francisco 49ers Yes
Seattle Seahawks Yes
St Louis Rams Yes
Tampa Bay Buccaneers Yes
Tennessee Titans No
Washington Redskins Yes

Major League Baseball Teams – Do they own team name .com?
Arizona Diamondbacks Yes
Atlanta Braves Yes
Baltimore Orioles Yes
Boston Red Sox Yes
Chicago Cubs Yes
Chicago White Sox Yes
Cincinnati Reds Yes
Cleveland Indians Yes
Colorado Rockies No
Detroit Tigers Yes
Florida Marlins Yes
Houston Astros Yes
Kansas City Royals Yes
Los Angeles Angels No
Los Angeles Dodgers Yes
Milwaukee Brewers Yes
Minnesota Twins No
New York Mets Yes
New York Yankees Yes
Oakland Athletics No
Philadelphia Phillies Yes
Pittsburgh Pirates Yes
San Diego Padres Yes
San Francisco Giants No
Seattle Mariners Yes
St. Louis Cardinals No
Tampa Bay Rays No
Texas Rangers No
Toronto Blue Jays Yes
Washington Nationals Yes

A Domain Name Doesn’t Matter

Elliot Silver
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24

If you have a unique business plan or web development idea that can’t easily or quickly be replicated, the domain name you choose for your website hardly matters. You can be   CrazyCrazyCrazy.us or some other funky domain name, and you will still have success if there’s a strong market for your product or service. The domain name matters much less than the idea and execution.

If your idea isn’t completely unique or you are entering a market where there is considerable competition, the domain name can be critical to your company’s success or failure.

In just about every market, a new industry leader can emerge (or   a new company can instantly be competitive) if he has the category killer domain name for the industry, as long as his product is at least competitive with the industry leaders. The company doesn’t necessarily need to be innovative to gain market share – just competitive.

New companies need to be innovative to take market share away from the leaders, or they need to spend considerable sums of money on marketing to get consumers to think its products are better or to give them a reason to buy them over its competitors products. A domain name doesn’t necessarily do all of this, but the category killer domain name does convey trust and is instantly recognizable.

Torah.com may not be the best looking website yet, as it’s a work in progress. However, I receive many Jewish-related questions every week from people who think Torah.com is the expert. I may not be from Lowell or have the most comprehensive site about Lowell (it’s debatable), but hundreds of people still visit Lowell.com each day, and many people book their hotel reservations right on the site.

A new company can spend a lot of money on marketing to convey trust. A category defining domain name can be expensive, but it can give instant credibility to a new or rebranded company.

Twitter Down: Facing DOS Attack

Elliot Silver
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6

twitterTwitter has been down for the past few hours, the result of a denial of service attack, according to an article on CNET. Although this must be frustrating to avid Twitter users and Twitter employees, this outage could end up being a very good thing for the company.

I haven’t dug in to my Google Analytics account this morning, but I would bet my traffic is down (on my blog and on my geodomain names). Generally after I post an article on my blog, I post an update on Twitter to let my followers know that there’s a new article. Within a few minutes, people begin to post comments, and I can tell that many of them saw the link via Twitter and visited my blog as a result. This hasn’t happened yet.

Needless to say, with a Twitter outage, I am sure that a lot of websites are seeing a significant impact to their traffic. Some sites may even see a loss of revenue as a result of the Twitter outage. All of this will make companies realize how important Twitter is to their bottom line, and may shed some light on ways to generate revenue for the yet to be profitable venture.

Microsoft Acquires Office.com Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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7

In a private move, Microsoft has acquired the domain name Office.com for a yet to be disclosed sum. Perhaps this figure will be disclosed in a future SEC filing.

Sometime between May 19 and May 23, 2009, a company called Marksmen, a Microsoft contractor according to ComputerWorld, took possession of the domain name. On August 4th, the domain name was transferred to Microsoft’s account, according to Whois information.

There is a note on the Office.com website advising customers that the company formerly operating on Office.com will no longer be operating on that domain name:

As you know from the recent email we sent you, we will be transitioning the operation of your Virtual Office account to ContactOffice.com during the next 30 days.

As part of this transition, on Monday, June 29, 2009, we changed email addresses in the office.com domain to ones in the contactoffice.com domain.

That said, it looks like Microsoft made a smart strategic move and will begin to use Office.com for it’s Microsoft Office suite of products in lieu of its current office.microsoft.com url. It will be interesting to see if there will be any significant changes to the operation of the website and interactivity on it, or if its simply a branding decision to enhance the company’s online presence.

Note to Politicians: Pay for Your Domains

Elliot Silver
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4

Because I get many Google Alerts each day, I am on top of just about every news article mentioning domain names. An article theme that is especially common has a title that goes something like this: “Cybersquatter buys domain name of XXXXXX candidate.” Instead of focusing on the fact that the politician forgot to renew his/her domain name, these articles almost always focus on the domain buyer.

On generic domain names, I have very little sympathy. I don’t think I own any common last name domain names, but I believe those are pretty much fair game since nobody has the rights to claim them as their own with many others sharing the same name. Other types of names can be more of a gray area depending on how common the phrase is, but regardless of my opinion and feelings about cybersquatting is the need to protect domain names from others who might want them for a variety of reasons. The onus should be on the politician for choosing not to renew his domain name.

Here are a few suggestions for political candidates when it comes to domain names:

1) Make sure the domain name is registered in the politican’s name, with privacy if he doesn’t want to give out an email address of an assistant. Campaign managers and workers come and go, and if they are getting the notices, the domain name may not be renewed.

2) Register domain names for several years and check on the registration every now and again. Set Blackberry/iPhone calendar alerts for a few years from now, and assuming the calendar is imported when a new mobile device is purchased, the alert will still be active.

3) Keep an active credit card on file

4) Don’t dump campaign domain names – even if they are time sensitive (Silver2008.org for example). They may not be useful in 2012, but they will have inlinks and perhaps some traffic. Maybe the domain names aren’t valuable to the campaign, but they could be valuable to a competitor or a cybersquatter who will monetize it. For $8, it should be a no brainer.

Just like the family who can’t afford to pay the bank for it’s home loan, a domain name will become available for someone else much like a home becomes the property of the bank if there’s a default. Most registrars give plenty of notice and time to renew, so there shouldn’t be a reason not to do it.

No matter what, a previously used campaign domain name has value to someone, and the politician should do whatever it takes to make sure he/she hangs on to associated domain names.

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