Mashable made this video famous this morning; featuring Jennifer Gabrielli as the maid of honor and sister to the bride, rapping her speech in an adaptation of Eminem’s song, “Without me.”
Within two hours, the YouTube video had 20,000 views that far exceeded the expectations of Benny Ek Media who shot the wedding video.
Seeing how a young, talented professional was about to have their domain name snatched and squatted upon, I contacted Benny Ek via email, advising him to spend $10 and get JenniferGabrielli.com registered.
Unfortunately, by late afternoon, Barry Garner, a fellow domainer decided to perform the following:
- Reposted the video on his venture, Pinned.com – a Pinterest clone
- Tweeted about the reposted video
- Registered JenniferGabrielli.com
Registering the name of a person that just so happens to gain sudden fame from their personal or social activities, is an act of douchebaggery in my book. Had I known that someone would move in so fast to get the domain for their own benefit, I would have called Benny Ek on the phone instead.
Surely, a lesson about getting your name registered before you even venture into the world of professionals, but also an example of why domainers have garnered such a bad reputation about what we do.
Barry might have grabbed it to give it up to her, no ?
The industry is smothered in douchebags. Found out the hard way that some lowlife competitors scrambled from the underbrush to get trademarks on two of my businesses. Businesses that predate their trademarks and that they KNEW were up and running.
(Like myself) you have a lot of strong opinions. Over the years I’ve agreed with some and not so much on others. On this one I could not agree more.
In the past I’ve caught some famous personalities names or monikers on the drops and contacted their PR people for transfer. Many have been thankful for catching something they had no idea was happening. Others were not responsive and I deleted them after a reasonable timeframe. (It’s something I recommend most do.)
We can only hope this “domainer” will do the right thing and transfer this girl her name and save us all more unwarranted criticism. So it goes.
Crap, on my last comment I meant to type “It’s NOT something I recommend most do.” Fat fingers…
Adam – If there was a slim chance of that being Barry’s intentions, it’s vanished now that the domain’s WHOIS was changed to private. The former record remains available via DomainTools.
John – This isn’t on a par with brand and trademark violation, it’s an exploitation of one’s personal suddenly acquired fame. Jennifer Gabrielli’s name became famously known through that video.
J – Such pro-active registrations are best left to be done by those who have a legitimate interest, otherwise one ends up in a mess, like in this case.
J, it’s ok for you to register a name but not for someone else to do it ? Acro you can read in to just about anything. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s actually a lesson, I’ve learned before and I’m pretty sure you reminded me of before too.
Adam – If you’re saying that by examining the facts I’m able to read into one’s motives, then yes; no doubt about it. Consider this: What are the odds that someone who went to the extent of copying (e.g. downloading) the original video and then uploading it to their own YouTube account, then ‘pinning’ and ‘tweeting’ about how viral it is, actually registered the domain in order to preserve it?
Sorry, but to play devil’s advocate you have to bring more substance than simply disagreeing.
Thank god for people like Adam above who actually know what I’m like…
I’ve been in the domain industry for nearly 18yrs and knew exactly what i was doing when registering this name… I knew instantly “Jennifer Gabrielli” would go viral due to the feel good nature and originality of the video, it was a given which is why i registered the name to protect her presence on the internet.
I have helped protect a number of celebrities and large corporations over the years, working with the likes of Piers Morgan and Sony, in fact it was only a couple of months ago i helped protect a domain for ” Greg Isenberg ” The Serial Entrepreneur from Canada, after he announced a new venture he was working on that got picked up by Techcrunch and various other high profile publications. Within hours of registering the name i managed to make contact with him and transferred the names across to his account, which he was extremely grateful for (feel free to confirm with him).
I’ve made some extremely good and powerful contacts by working this way, and I’m not about to change :O)
I tell you what gives domainers a bad name…. Douchebag editors who don’t do their research, nor make contact with the parties they are discussing.
Barry – I understand that now that you’ve been called out, the rules have changed.
If you were acting upon the interest of this young lady, we would be seeing her control the domain already. In my opinion, this is all an after-thought, since you were called out on how this evolved.
Please explain why you copied the original video and re-uploaded it to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQzXdxjPGl0 and then promoted it from that URL on social media. Every major news source linked to the original video, including TMZ etc.
The original video now has more than 300k views on YouTube.
The bottom line is, by being caught in the act, you’re now attempting to present yourself in a different light. It’s disappointing to see that you’re showing no repentance nor have the balls to admit that your $10 registration was foolish. So much for “18 years” of domaining.
Enough said, give the domain to Jennifer already.
Lol, i really don’t need to explain my actions to you, and those who know me know exactly what I’m about.
If i wanted to benefit from her domain i would have parked it, pointed it to some money making scheme, or better still pointed it to youtube clip which was being actually being monetized… the fact it’s still sitting dormant should speak volumes!
I would also like to point out it’s not always that quicker process when wanting to transfer a domain to someone you have never met or spoken with before. I’m not going to transfer the domain to “Benny Ek Media” as I’m unsure of their relationship with “Jennifer Gabrielli”, that’s probably why they ignored your request to register the domain in the first place as they knew they had no rights to it. The only persons name you will see in the whois is hers when we make contact, and to get to that stage isn’t always that simple when you have various people trying to make claims they are her, obviously you are a newbie at this, that’s why you approached a videographer and not the actual person who’s name it is “Jennifer Gabrielli”, Doh!!!
I have a question for your Mr Editor? Were you the person who i removed from my facebook friends list yesterday for spamming my wall? I remember seeing a signature relating to domaining and editorial, If so this entire thread explains a lot 😛
Barry – Of course you don’t have to explain anything about your attempt to leech off the viral video, nor do I have to babysit you either when your actions speak for themselves. Sorry to hear that you think this is all personal. The fact is, that while I was expecting this act of blatant squatting from someone, just wasn’t expecting this to be you. I’m truly disappointed.
Save your pedantic rant, attempting to belittle my background and personal references for someone in your circle of celebrities that you’re apparently an acolyte of.
I never asked Ek Media to register the domain themselves, I asked them to contact Jennifer Gabrielli on my behalf, since the domain was sure to be squatted. For being British you’ve surely heard of the process of being introduced to strangers, or is that not en vogue anymore?
Regarding the latter statement, I never spammed your facebook as my personal account is only for friends and relatives and I don’t know you from Adam. But I have removed you from my LinkedIn contacts because I don’t believe that you’re as kosher as you want people to believe.
Acro,
I can appreciate your integrity. I think if we believe we should be screwing people over to make money, we are making a huge mistake. After all, when we die, we can’t take money with us, but our actions, in this life, are what’s most important.
Over a year ago, I registered a domain for my 12-yr-old nephew, an up-and-coming ace at soccer, that was in the format firstnamelastname.com.
When it came time to renew, I was waiting to have enough cash to renew a bunch of domains at once, but somehow I dropped the ball on that one and accidentally let it go.
Well, I figured I could just re-register it, but NO! HugeDomains snapped it up and are selling it for $500.
We have a number of other good options, but I can’t say I’m not super irritated about this!