Acro.net - Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Let’s face it: you’ve seen the various endorsements that media and organizations have provided the Democrat candidate, Barack Obama with. It looks like Obama is heading towards a steadfast landslide victory on November 4th. There are lots of domains and web sites that do the same type of endorsement by promoting Barack Obama’s message and/or attacking the opposition.

A few weeks ago I registered GoMilfy.com and built on it a web site that serves two purposes: One, to spoof VP candidate Sarah Palin, whose mannerisms and political bravado has surprised many equally new and old in politics and two, to provide a platform that pokes fun at GoDaddy’s use of mostly female celebrity figures and “in your face” advertising, consistent with the culture of NASCAR racing. Two birds with one stone, you might say.

I did not advertise the web site at all, other than through the signature of my (admittedly numerous) posts at DNForum.com. Then, 10 days before the election I decided to put the domain name GoMilfy.com and its current content on eBay. If you’re wondering why the high starting price, you’re obviously missing out on the low cost of conducting such large scale advertising: roughly $11 for 10 days of promotional listing. Plus it might actually sell.

By visiting GoMilfy.com you get an instant idea that it’s a parody, a spoof web site that cannot be seriously “real”. I mean, every drop of my known sense of humor is there: from the mirroring of the GoDaddy logo and the “.mom” TLD, to the statements supposedly made by Sarah Palin - consistent with her well-known, airhead phrases during the past weeks of her campaigning.

There are no Joe the Plumber jokes, I’m afraid.

GoDaddy is the world’s largest registrar of domains, famous for their Superbowl commercials and constant use of NASCAR racing celebrities. The depictions are more iconic than kitsch; and for that I must say that GoDaddy has become a household name outside the domain industry, rising from the levels of “just another registrar” around 2000 to that of world dominator with domains.

And as such, spoofing GoDaddy is a fun thing.

Around 4pm today I received a call by a GoDaddy domain services manager, Karen N. She politely explained that they have received inquiries about GoMilfy.com - apparently from people that were wondering about GoDaddy’s affiliation with it. I shared a laugh with Ms. Karen, explaining that this must mean I did a good job spoofing their web site, if I had visitors wondering about GoMilfy.com. It was a compliment towards the roughly four hours of detailed work I put into it, on a boring Friday afternoon, a few weeks ago.

So now the web site has been mentioned on Digg and Stumbled upon and the hits keep coming. I’ve added GoDaddy’s requested disclaimer that they are not affiliated with the web site and although I don’t foresee it will sell on eBay, it has definitely received some “word of mouth” visitor traffic.

Does GoDaddy and its CEO & former jarhead  Bob Parsons, endorse Barack Obama? I don’t know, but I have a hunch that they do

I hold domains as “hostages“, “not allowing people who want them to use them.”

This moronic allegation came in an email, from some French guy named “Guillaume Sibelle” from Paris, France. Twice he placed a lowball offer of 60 euro for a domain I own, and twice I had to slap him back to reality with my very reasonable counter-offers, eventually canceling his bids at Sedo.

After he could not start an offer for the 3rd time as I set a minimum price, Guillaume Sibelle emailed me saying that I “block people for years that want to use a domain name.” I am not sure how I am doing that, since I paid to acquire that domain. I can do whatever I want with it. In fact, I don’t have to set up a web site, I can use it as a mail-only domain or a private network. I can put a picture of my cat on it.

Or a picture of Guillaume Sibelle next to the word “idiot”.

Where do these people come from?

Guillaume Sibelle appears to be a student of architecture. Should people in France trust Guillaume Sibelle with the design and building of their residences, parks or museums?

Guillaume Sibelle did not even have the foresight to register his name as a .com and he got upset because I asked to be compensated for my investment in a domain name, registered five years ago. What do I tell this moron, other than to piss off in French?

During the exchange of a few short emails, he told me my business model of selling domains for profit will soon vanish. At that point I provided him with links to various domain sales trackers, such as DNJournal to see for himself that my business model works just fine.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds of such morons on the Internet, just like Guillaume Sibelle. When the Internet became commercial, they were still too young to be involved in the market and right now all the good domains are gone.

It’s not my fault Guillaume Sibelle’s mom didn’t pop him out a decade earlier.

Also this week, some lady from San Francisco emailed me about her domain that she lost by not renewing it. It was her first name in .com. Network Solutions auctioned it off via NameJet and I ended up buying it for $950. The domain has traffic, backlinks and it’s 12 years old; to me the price was justified. To her astonishment, that $950 represented “95 years of renewal fees” and she questioned my minimum asking price, offering $75 instead.

I told her to go ahead and register her full name, which was still available. She didn’t email me back after this. Four days later, her full name is still available as a .com

Some people just don’t get it, no matter how clear you present the facts to them.

Now, I am not sure who is more dangerous: an idiot that is uninformed about how things work and is obsessing about me keeping domains “hostage”, or an angry ignoramus that attempts to justify their own lack of action for a property that they let lapse. Shame, as her resume shows she worked for a few good “dot com” companies in the 90’s.

I would have given her the domain for as little as 25% profit, to justify a few parameters: my credit card fees, my taxation premium and the fact that I spent time researching a list of pre-released domains.

But I simply dislike people with attitude that want a hand-out and don’t want to do anything to earn it.