Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

The Facebook IPO, its woes and consequent downgrading by the underwriters, reminded me of exactly how the financial markets have treated Greece.

When the financial crisis broke out at the end of 2009, those at Goldman Sachs quickly turned around and speculated against the very country they helped ascend the Eurozone in 2000. The bank made billions by betting on the collapse of the Greek economy.

This act, and subsequent downgrading of Greece, all while it was in the process of restructuring its debt via the issuing of bonds, does not differ from what Morgan Stanley and other underwriters just did with Facebook.

Frustrated by the fact that he’s not being given the much-needed break in order to allow his company’s stock to shine through, Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg must be feeling like a Greek at the moment.

With FB currently down 15% since the IPO, the backstabbing by its own underwriters less than 24 hours of trading later proves that there is no such thing as allies in the world’s financial markets.

Meanwhile, the future of a country accused of everything and recognized for nothing is at stake, but its citizens can vote, at least, who will lead them through their subsequent battle of Eurozone, in the upcoming elections on June 17th.

On the other hand, Marc Zuckerberg, sole “dictator” of his corporation cannot do the same, but he surely has been feeling like a Greek since the Facebook IPO.

I get the usual dosage of domainer spam, on a daily basis. These are individual domains being offered, based on domains that I own, with hyphens inserted between the keywords or alternate TLDs.

I delete those immediately.

There is another category of email offers that fall in the “domainer fail” category, and I will explain its issues by using a real example from a Joaquim Rodrigues who operates URLideas.com

Our friend introduces himself from a Hotmail account. Fail checkmark #1.

He then proceeds to state:

“I’m liquidating a part of my domain portfolio.”

That’s Fail checkmark #2. When I hear someone is “liquidating” something, it means that they are trying to get juice out of rotten oranges. What I want to see is current investment activity by the pitcher of those domains.

Which brings us to Fail checkmark #3: URLideas.com has nothing to say for the person or the company. It has a lame “under construction” image and a fax.

Last time I used a fax was in 2009. Fail checkmark #4.

The attached list was in Excel, and that renders Fail checkmark #5. With the amount of viruses and trojans in the wild, sending anything else than a text document might immediately forward your offers to the trash.

After scanning the attachment for viruses, I opened it. There were three columns: domain name, TLD it belongs to and notes. The notes field contained prior sales of other TLDs for the same domain, or visitor stats. Jotting Fail checkmark #6: I don’t care about how much wespeak.es sold for; when you offer wespeak.asia the domain+TLD must “speak” for itself.

Finally, Fail checkmark #7 comes in the form of numerous adult domains, and Spanish words that I’ve no interest in.

Joaquim Rodrigues stated in his email:

“I’m sending to you this email because according my searches, you are one of the best investors in this industry.”

Thanks, Joaquim – and that’s why I’m now using your email as an example of what you should not bug the “best investors in this industry” with, when you want to “liquidate” your domain portfolio.

Earlier today, Mike Berkens posted about a UDRP case that is about to claim the ‘developed’ web site, Vanity.com

Because it’s pointless to wade through trolling comments in order to relay the type of information that such a post deserves, I’m posting it all here.

What does one do with a domain, as soon as they register it?

The obvious answer is parking. It works for the most part, as a place holder that requires no development and no web hosting is needed for some temporary, under construction notification.

The next step up, is exactly that: a simple page that notifies visitors that the content is not there yet.

One step up, is a system that collects email addresses, all while the web site is “under construction”.

A mini site exists for the purpose of delivering content in small, organized chunks, interlaced strategically with ads such as AdSense, for monetization purposes.

Static web sites contain more info than a minisite and their content does not seem to be updated often; the manual editing of pages might occur once in a blue moon.

Dynamic web sites utilize multiple sources of information, databases and feeds to keep the content fresh; both for the visitors and for ranking purposes in search engines.

Now, there is a category that combines all of these elements and yet does not fall in any distinct category: the perpetually under construction, pseudo-developed collection of pages that hints of development. Its purpose and existence is simple: it’s there in order to avoid the delivery of the much-dreaded UDRP, particularly when the domain is extremely valuable.

This method of hybrid domain existence seems to work for the most part, as it often fools both those that could have a legitimate interest in challenging ownership in a domain, and those that deliver judgement over its status. It works beautifully even with domainers that are otherwise experienced, and yet fall prey to tagging such an abomination as “developed”.

On the subject of Vanity.com which Mike scooped from the newly opened cases at the WIPO, I’d be interested to read the case and the argument of the complainant and the respondent; the latter appears to be a company that is not registered in the state of California, unlike what the WHOIS shows.

It was a great opportunity to clear out some misconceptions about domains and web development, and I’m looking forward to doing the same in person at TRAFFIC 2012 in Ft. Lauderdale.

Former Moniker account manager, Bari Meyerson, has moved to eNom as a senior bizdev manager, according to Elliot’s Blog.

That’s a great promotion for the very likable Bari, and there is a very specific reason why I like her.

Although I was never a Moniker fan – still keeping less than 10 domains there for no particular reason – Bari stood out for me in TRAFFIC 2008 in Orlando, when she was part of the Moniker crowd overseeing (cough, cough) the live domain auction.

My domain, 360.org was being auctioned – back then with a very reasonable reserve of $6,000 – and during the minute or so that attention was drawn to the lot, Bari “drew” in the air a full circle, with her fingers. That shows she understood the significance of the number very well.

Incidentally, the domain wasn’t sold at the auction but a year and a half later set the record for the highest priced NNN .org in history.

Thank you, Bari, for knowing the rules of the game so well and best of success at your new job with eNom.

It’s surreal and funny at the same time; I just deposited $100 into my Fabulous.com account in order to renew some domains.

Most of the time, I pay with a credit card, but on occasion I’ve deposited funds via PayPal.

When the email receipt came back, it said that the recipient of the funds was eNom.com. The PayPal email was pay@fabulous.com :

“You’ve sent a payment of $100.00 USD to Enom Inc, and you’ll be billed with Bill Me Later®, a PayPal service through your PayPal account.”

My deposit is still pending – all while the funds have left my PayPal account.

I’m aware of eNom managing back-end functions for Fabulous but this looks like a glitch thus far. Will update when I hear back from the Fabulous.com support.