DomainReport.ca - The techvibes.com blog has a post on Kevin Ham's speech in Vancouver this week at the Vancouver Enterprise Forum.
The post talks about how Ham discussed getting into domain names, and his life and business lessons learned so far. Ham also presented a video on his company's plans for Vancouver.com, and told the crowd they were open to partnerships and ideas for the site. The video is posted on the blog.
The interesting thing was the comments made on this blog post, some from people who attended the event. Though most found his speech inspiring, they were less impressed by the domain investing angle.
Some of the comments:
Give the domain to the city of Vancouver and let people take a vote on what they want it to be.
I'm ashamed that this city's tech entrepreneur community idolizes domain squatters.
So, buying a domain name and making a business out of that should be worshiped? Weird.
I don't idolize him or domain squatting.
The City of Vancouver should just undergo a simple Domain Name Dispute Resolution process to win the Vancouver.com domain - it would be awarded back to the city with zero difficulty, IMO.
To me, these comments show that domainers are still lumped in by many people as cyber squatters. I thought the impression of domain investors was getting better, but apparently not.
You can read the post on tech vibes here:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/reinvents-kevin-ham-wants-your-ideas-for-vancouver.com
It is true that the domain industry as a whole is still falsely perceived to be a cybersquatter rat nest.
ReplyDeleteBut it's actually fitting that those particular comments are aimed at Kevin Ham's company, considering that he was in fact for a long time profiting from trademark typo traffic through his .CM partnership with Cameroon. Through this project he has to a great extent negatively influenced the public's view of the domain industry.
I guess his story is both inspirational in the sense that entrepreneurial creativity pays off and shady because he was involved in the monetization of trademark-infringing domains or at least domain extension typos.
The city of Vancouver already has Vancouver.ca ... if they want the .com make Dr. Ham an offer.
ReplyDeleteI was taken aback by the sheer ignorance of some of these comments (I was getting 1999 flashbacks) until I noticed the URL: TechVibes.com.
ReplyDeletePlease. A "techie" site? That says it all. The irony here is that many of these guys are the biggest reason why a lot of businesses (and cities) don't have killer names. The #1 answer I hear when I ask, "Why didn't you simply buy the name?" is "At the time, my webmaster (or IT department) didn't feel it was worth the money."
Kevin ponied up for Vancouver.com and it's his "real estate" fair and square.