Does GoDaddy endorse Obama?

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 😀