De-cluttering Your Wardrobe … and Your Domain Name Portfolio

When I was a child my mother would come knocking on my bedroom door about once every two years holding a large empty garbage bag. We would open up my wardrobe and stare into the packed space of colour and fabric. After a moment of silence the ritual triage would commence.

The triage was rather simple. Each item in the closet would be placed into one of 3 piles: Pile 1 was the “must have” items – core items that get a lot of wear and regular use, the wardrobe foundation. Pile 2 was the “not sure” or “nice to have” – a mixed pile of extra items or accessories that had occasional or irregular use or were in fashion at some time.  Pile 3 was “clutter” – items no longer worn, no longer necessary that were just taking up valuable space.

Much of what we keep in our cupboards and closets is often more for nostalgia than for real functionality and use. We hoard stuff from the past thinking it will get some wear or use again, typically clothes or accessories that you want to keep for those “just in case” moments.

As we cleared through the closet item by item, my mother would say, “You haven’t worn that for the last two years”, “I don’t remember seeing you ever wear that”, “This is much too small for you”, “This is in tatters – do you really want to keep it?” and “You’ve outgrown that style – you can definitely let that one go”.

My mother was dispassionate about my wardrobe but that’s exactly what one needs in an exercise like cleaning out a closet. Having her discipline in helping me sort out my clothes was necessary, since cleaning out the closet was an emotional exercise for me – I had an attachment to everything in there. Doing it alone never gave the same “tidied-up” results, as many items that should have been placed in Pile 3 ended up in Pile 2 – just in case.

In Pile 3 are the items you just don’t wear and will never again wear. They served their purpose but now are out of style, the wrong colour or size, or just not your personal brand now. These are items you bought thinking you might eventually use them or were such a bargain that you couldn’t not buy them. But you know, deep down, that you will never wear these items again, despite the emotional attachment.

The same process used to clean up your wardrobe can be applied to reviewing a portfolio of domain names. It makes sense to plan a regular review and put domains names into three piles to check if you own the right ones. In Pile 1 are the names you must own because they are the place where your customers expect to find you. In Pile 2 are the domain names to keep an eye on to see if they should be kept or allowed to elapse based on traffic, trademark protection, or business need. In Pile 3 are domain names you simply no longer need, some of which might be sufficiently generic to be sold. Pile 3 can then be turned into either recurring cost savings or one-off windfalls from a well-brokered sale.

Part of the portfolio clean-up process includes identifying domain names that you need to own or to acquire for upcoming business activities. Savings from Pile 3 can help in funding those acquisitions.

The first de-cluttering process is always somewhat painful – letting things go is not so easy – but the end result is worth the effort as your closet is once again in order and well-organized. You know what you have and why. The best part of tidying up is creating space for items that you should have, for upcoming occasions or events or for new fashion items.

Independent and dispassionate advice is worth considering when implementing a domain name portfolio review. It helps ensure that you will achieve the best results to free up capital, reduce infringements and improve both traffic and customer experience in reaching your website, which in turn will strengthen your brand and image.

R-E-S-P-E-K-T

Cricket Ad

This poster caught my eye recently for two reasons.  First was the highlighted letter K, which drew attention to the intentional misspelling of the word “respect.”  Second was the simplicity of the advertising message that included only a slogan and a prominently displayed domain name. Curious to find out what ‘respekt’ “means to me,” I visited getsomerespekt.com, which led me to a site for Cricket Communications, a wireless provider that offers broadband, mobile phones, and pay-as-you-go plans.

A bit more research revealed that this domain name and the poster I saw were part of Cricket’s new “Respekt” ad campaign, which features the classic Aretha Franklin song and promotes Cricket’s low prices (“respect for your wallet”) and the flexibility of pay-as-you-go plans (“respect for your freedom”).  Cricket’s logo features an oversized green K.  The company centers its branding around this symbol, which is why the word “respect” is spelled with a K in its promotions.

Normally, I would think getsomerespekt.com is a terrible domain name – it’s long, it has nothing to do with the Cricket brand and it requires consumers to remember to misspell a common word.  But Cricket covered its bases well with this campaign and didn’t put all of its stock into a single domain. The domains getsomerespect.com, cricketrespekt.com and cricketrespect.com all redirect to getsomerespekt.com, meaning that consumers do not have to remember the misspelling or the entire slogan.  In addition, other advertisements, both print and on television, include Cricket’s primary domain name, mycricket.com, giving consumers yet another way to access the company online.

This campaign stood out to me as an interesting example of how brands can utilize domain names as creative marketing tools.  By combining it with a catchy slogan and a hugely popular song, Cricket was able to use the getsomerespekt.com domain to underscore and strengthen its marketing message, as well as present consumers with a new platform through which to interact with the brand.  You’ve got to respekt that.

Internet Lawlessness

What comes to mind when you see a van like this, parked on the side of the street with its license plate completely covered in spray paint?  Most likely, you suspect some type of illegal or illicit activity, and you might cross to the other side of the street when you pass it.  If a police officer were to see this van approaching, there’s no question that he would pull it over – aside from making the van look completely suspicious, obscuring license plates is illegal.

Anyone who has taken a written test for their learner’s driving permit knows how many laws there are regarding driving (quick – how many feet do you have to stop behind a school bus?).  These are designed to both maintain order on the road and keep people safe. We’re used to having rules for driving and for other parts of our lives. So why is it that the Internet, despite being over a decade old, is still largely devoid of laws?

Take one example: the online marketplace. In reality, it basically functions as a free-for-all bazaar, where you know very little about the elements and agents at work, and anything you can imagine is for sale and bartering and haggling are par for the course.  A woman in Boston even came across an ad putting her son up for adoption on Craigslist earlier this summer. With the economic recession, the instances of bartering on the Internet have increased substantially and now there is even a Web site where people can barter for health care.

People who participate in the online buying and selling process rarely know anything about the other party involved. Sometimes, as in the case with the false adoption ad, the sellers are scammers who attempt to dupe unsuspecting buyers into sending them money for fake or even non-existent goods (or the promise of sharing in princely riches as we all have seen in advanced-fee scams). Many people lack the training or the good sense to be able to detect this type of fraud, and as a result, continue to be preyed upon online. Lawlessness runs rampant on the Internet, largely due to the fact that it is easy for people to conceal their identities. Online, it’s passable to cover up your license plate with spray paint in order to avoid being held accountable for your actions.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

The Daily Green’s Living Green blog ran a story over the weekend about the proposed .eco gTLD and the various groups who are vying for control over it.  On one side are Al Gore, the Sierra Club and Dot Eco. On the other are the Canadian Environmental group Big Room (former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is tied indirectly to the organization), WWF International and Green Cross.  Each group is planning to donate a portion of the registration fees it will receive as operator of the gTLD to green programs and causes.  Brian Clark Howard, the author of the post, questions the need for .eco – and all other new gTLDs for that matter. He contends that a separate gTLD could marginalize the green movement by taking it out of the mainstream, both in terms of Internet addresses and the global conversation.  He writes, “I don’t see why green sites need their own identifier and separate domain, when we should be reaching as many people as possible.”

Howard raises an interesting issue in his post: the potential fragmentation of the Internet that an unlimited number of new gTLDs could cause.  Until now, I’ve focused on the issue of Internet fragmentation from a purely practical perspective – that new gTLDs will alter the way consumers search for content on the Web and will likely make their experience less fluid and more complicated, at least during the initial adoption period.  But there are also the potential social ramifications that gTLDs could have.  Howard fears that having a separate identifier will remove the green movement from the mainstream. Right now there is dialogue in a common space; could new TLDs actually work to isolate people?

This post resonated with me more than other pieces I’ve read about new gTLDs because Howard is not a domain name expert, but an average Internet user.  He mentions his appreciation for the order and organization of the current system of 21 gTLDs.  Ultimately, it is people like Howard who are going to be most affected by the change to the Internet structure.  One of the application requirements for new gTLDs is that they must provide a benefit to a particular community. Howard embodies the target audience for .eco, and he’s clearly not buying into it.

At this point, it seems inevitable that ICANN will move forward with the rollout of new gTLDs.  This is not an entirely bad thing.  But ICANN and future gTLD operators need to remember to listen to end users like Howard, because they are the ones who are most affected by the changes to the Internet.

Not So Smooth Criminal

At the beginning of this month, news broke that a New Jersey man was arrested for stealing the domain name p2p.com and reselling it for over $100,000. This marked the first time an arrest has ever been made for the theft of a domain name.

Daniel Gonclave hacked into the account of the previous owner of p2p.com and transferred the ownership of the domain to himself. He then put the domain name up for sale on eBay, where Los Angeles Clippers forward Mark Madsen purchased it for $111,000. Madsen, apparently, moonlights as a domain name speculator, routinely buying and selling domain names of different values. Tom Ziller at NBA FanHouse documents Madsen’s domainer activities in a recent blog entry.

The arrest could be significant for the domain name industry as a whole. Victor Epstein of the Associated Press interviewed various authorities who affirmed that this is not the first time a domain name has been stolen, but it is the first time police have taken action against the crime. In past cases, attorneys representing the victims of domain name theft have pushed for criminal prosecution but have been unsuccessful in their attempts. The high resale price of the domain along with the involvement of a famous athlete could give the arrest of Mr. Gonclave a high enough profile that it will spur action on the part of policymakers to define other domain name frauds as criminal activities. In any case, it will be interesting to see how this arrest affects the domain name space on the whole.