You may have caught wind of some of the .me buzz last week, as GoDaddy started taking registrations for them for $20 a year (and you have to sign up for two years, so that should really be $40). According to Mashable.com several people were claiming to have registered the same domain name, which is going to be a disappointment for some. If eight people say they registered it, that will leave seven people really unhappy about the whole ordeal.
GoDaddy has also released this response to the claims that there was some wacky stuff going on during the first day of .me domain name registrations:
We knew the .ME Open Registration response would be tremendous, but it went beyond even what we had expected. As a result, we experienced some system issues in our communication with the registry.
As soon as we became aware of the issue we began taking steps to correct it. It is now resolved. For our customers, if we did not successfully register the domain name requested they will receive a full refund.
Now that the first week’s hype is over, it might be a little easier to search around and see what .me domain names you can register from GoDaddy. Only problem your left with is, are all the good names taken already?
We all started hearing the phrase “front running” when Network Solutions got caught with their pants down on a few domain name registration issues. Now what does it mean? With all the news and coverage, not many bothered to explain.
For once a term in web hosting that says what it means and means what it says. Type-in traffic is when somebody types in a word or phrase and just adds .com (or some other domain name extension) to the end of it into the address bar instead of searching for it.
There are often odd terms thrown about in the web hosting and web development worlds that just don’t make any sense the the common man on the street. Phil drops me in an e-mail asking…
From time to time, I get a damned good e-mail that I have to share. This one from Phil asks a question that I thought was well worth looking into:
Cybersquatting – Whats is it and Who Does it?
To those outside of the Online world, cybersquatting sounds like part of a work out routine you’d do with a digital Richard Simmons. I can promise you though that this is not the case. It is actually a very important issue that comes up in the world of domain name registrations.
It is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. At least that is according to the United States federal law on the issue, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
Now when people are squatting outside of the digital realm we live in, it usually means they are living in an abandoned building or some other space that the squatter does not own.
Back to the Online side of things, cybersquatters will actually register and pay for the domains in question and then wave it in the face of the copyright holder and sometimes even put up really bad things about them in hopes that they will want to give them a big ol’ check to shut them up and buy the domain.
For more information on domain name squatting I would highly suggest checking out ICANN’s uniform domain-name dispute-resolution policy.