Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

What happens when one makes hasty decisions under the introduction of artificial pressure? They cave in to the pressure – something that they regret later on.

The truth is, speculation of the markets is not by itself an indication of direction. But let me be clear here: life is not all about prediction of direction, it’s about insurance against extreme volatility.

I wrote about it: define an exit strategy – an exit plan that will kick in when certain unfavorable conditions are met.

But should you panic?

Nowadays, there is a lot of doom and gloom regarding domaining, and it permeates through the usual social network channels. While some of it comes from sources with a solid background in the markets, there is a lot of “drunk commentary” that is simply written for impression and for stirring sheer controversy.

It’s about the ratings, baby: Some of it, advises you to invest in gold, futures and real estate instead of humble domaining. Others, suggest that you should carry on with your domainer plans, all while retaining an ever-raining and ever-thundering dark cloud above your head. Recession. Financial depression. Personal compression.

I say, fuck this - and I rarely drop the F-bomb in public. But enough is enough.

Life is not about order, it’s about anarchy. The universe thrives on chaos and disorder and if you thought you, yourself, are too small and unimportant you’re probably right. Nobody will listen to your pleas and very few will listen to your ideas.

However, there is hope: learn to block out all white noise that attempts to bring you down. By all means involve constructive criticism in your daily plans of evolving your business. Those that negate you and want to turn you into a lemming, fuck them.

So is the domain sky truly falling?

I don’t know really, but take a look at the Domainfest results of today. More than $2 million in sales means one thing: domaining is alive and kicking.

What else does it say?

Find end user buyers. The money is not in the domain flipping game. In fact, I am personally known for picking up domains that you flipped for under $100 and selling them for thousands of dollars. I’ve done that again and again, because I didn’t listen to the doom and gloom crap.

That’s your strategy. Focus on your own success. And fuck them.

English is the number one language used in International commerce, regardless of the actual number of native speakers: The number of Chinese Mandarin speakers surpasses that of native speakers of English around the world – a staggering 845 million versus 345 million for English.

Several dozen other languages are spoken worldwide, one of which is Greek.

Despite its important role in introducing literature, philosophy, science and arts to the so-called Western Civilization, Greek is only spoken by roughly 14 million people worldwide; most of them in Greece, Cyprus and the Greek diaspora around the world.

The use of a non-Latin alphabet by the Greeks has proven to be a challenge throughout the proliferation of computers and the Internet. Although the ISO 639-1 standard now describes the particulars of the Greek language so that Greeks can utilize every major operating system, such as Windows, Linux or OS X the fact remains that quite often Greeks online resort to the use of ‘greeklish’ for communicating with eachother.

Essentially, typing Greek words with their phonetic corresponding combination – or even visual substitute – is the definition of ‘greeklish’. For example, a simple Greek word such as “Αθήνα” for “Athens” can be written as “Athina” in greeklish. Due to the Latin alphabet lacking the letter theta, a visual substitution is often used: the number “8″ – closely resembling a Greek theta – would render “A8ina” as a valid greeklish word.

Things get even more complex due to the lack of a standard for the greeklish use; for example, if we were to utilize visual substitution versus phonetic, “Αθήνα” could easily be written as “A8nva” – using “n” as a Greek eta and “v” as the letter ni (Note: the name of the letter “N” or “ni” is inexplicably scribed as “nu” by the English lexicons.)

Confused yet?

This introduction about how Greeks type words is related to a whole separate issue: when written in greeklish, certain Greek words match other words written in English which have a whole different meaning.

And that’s where the fun begins.

The shorthand of “Muni” for “municipal” is a commonly used word in English. It’s also guaranteed to bring a chuckle to a Greek speaker, simply because it means “pussy” – and not of the feline kind.

In a similar manner, references to “colos” for “co-location services” are bound to be negatively received by a Greek speaker: the word means “ass” – the very one you’re sitting on right now. The same word can be written with a “K” as “kolos” – I am certain that the company behind Kolos.com – a bookstore from Ukraine – would never want to open a department in downtown Athens, Greece.

Finally, I remember walking around Wal-Mart, only to find a fine specimen of failed marketing research. The Kavli brand includes some really tasty crackers but I doubt they’d be bringing them to Greece, where the word is a crude reference to “cock” – not of the rooster kind, mind you.

Less than a week ago, I emphasized the importance of having an exit strategy as part of a business plan. Foreseeing the future is not easy; predicting the impact of changing course is easier.

The news about the demise of the Bido service arrived in ‘shock and awe’ waves yesterday; most domainers are not prepared to see enterprises vanish without much of a warning.

And yet, it all comes down to that exit strategy I referenced, the triggering of a process that calls for one’s attention with a large, flashing ‘Game Over’ sign.

From the very beginning, Bido took on a unique role in the domaining market, as the only auction start-up created by domainers for domainers from the ground up. Technologically speaking, the bidding platform utilized many mechanisms of promoting, reviewing, discussing, buying and selling domains. If you think of domains as a product, Bido created a platform that encompassed a generous set of playgrounds to encourage a transaction.

Was the Bido business model right or wrong?

There is truly no direct answer to that; as the platform evolved tremendously in the two years since its launch. It changed and grew according to feedback and according to the ever-changing conditions of the domain market.

To outright state that Bido failed, one needs to have experienced the dot com boom and bust era first hand. Trust me, I was there and despite closing shop Bido did a whole lot better than many start-ups of the late 90′s; it actually created the technology and the processes that will be further utilized in future ventures.

As Philip II of Macedonia told his son Alexander the Great, “…seek thyself another kingdom, for this which I leave is too small for thee.” Domaining is a small, niche market. Bido created an application and a platform slated for bigger things.

Experience is not gained from success, it’s attained by failing and discovering what went wrong during the course. This is exactly what the Bido guys will be doing right now, after their exit strategy alarms kicked in.

A big thank you to Sahar Sarid, Jarred Cohen and all of those who worked at Bido.