When sharing content online it’s important to bring your “A” game. This is especially important when sharing content designed to to educate or persuade the audience on a particular issue. You need to know the audience, know the topic and be ready to engage with the reaction your content receives.
Last week I read some sloppy content sharing that failed on all these counts. It was a blog post contributed to CircleID, a community devoted to discussions on Internet infrastructure, developments and policy. It was launched in 2002 by Ali Farshchian and has maintained an audience of incredibly knowledgeable participants – Vint Cerf is a regular participant as an example. I joined in 2005 and do a lot more listening than sharing within this group of big brains.
The author identifies himself as the executive director of a trade group and is writing about the .com top level domain. As an ostensible basis he uses a recent report from Boston Consulting Group about the growth of the secondary market for .com domains. This is not news – the .com extension was created in 1985 and was available for purchase starting in 1995 on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Despite this the author frames the issue as a lack of choice for new business owners, and that “domainers” are reaping unfair profits in the secondary market. There is a strong sense here of Capt. Renault hypocrisy from the movie Casablanca – “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” – as he is being handed his winnings. Is it really so surprising that after 25 years many .com names are no longer available? And that a secondary market developed – many years ago now?
There was no mention of how companies are free to register some other top level domain other than .com. Domains have not been about online navigation for many years, they are about brand. What’s wrong with mycompany.biz, or mygovtcontractor.us? OTOH, sometimes buying on the secondary market makes perfect business sense.
In 1999 I was hired by a fast-growing startup known as TeknoSurf.com. Six months later we rebranded as Advertising.com, which was bought in 2004 by AOL and is now owned by Verizon.
It’s clear the author doesn’t have a deep understanding of the domain market and didn’t consider the expertise of this audience. Several commenters pounced with scathing and intelligent responses. Here are three of my favorites:
Personally I’m really bummed out that all the good lots near Pebble Beach, CA (just across the bay from me) are owned and available only for high prices (often about $30million.) Why should I have to pay such high prices to people who merely got there before I did?! It’s so unfair! I really do hope that whatever “solution” is found for .com could be applied so that I could buy a nice 40,000 sq ft house at Cypress Point for cheap.
Mike, you need to go back and re-read that report and then do some research on your own. Boston Consulting reports “Most new domain Dot-Coms are registered in the primary market. In 2020, there were a total of 39M new domain registrations in the primary retail market as compared to 1M secondary retail market resales” or 1/40 secondary resales vs. 39/40 new domain registrations in the primary market. The biggest “players” in the .COM secondary market are the ICANN-accredited registrars, e.g., GoDaddy et al. ICANN publishes monthly reports of the primary market .COM registrations by registrar here. But GoDaddy, the largest registrar in the world, also runs one of the largest “aftermarket” auctions (secondary resales) of .COM domain names, whose inventory includes .COM domain names not renewed by registrants, but still controlled by registrars who pocket the proceeds. The Boston Consulting Group report failed to explain any of that, and you, of course, jumped to ill-informed conclusions about “domainers.”
“Big telecom companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T;have a long and sordid history of funding ‘astroturf’ organizations. These front groups, who often hide their funding sources, are tasked with creating the appearance of public support for policies that, frankly no one supports, because they allow cable and phone companies to screw us over more than they already do.
“One particularly egregious example of this is CALinnovates, an organization that purports to advocate for startups and tech innovation, but takes big money from AT&T;to spread propaganda against net neutrality and Internet privacy protections.”
From a blog post by Fight for the Future
I wonder who could be paying you to astroturf on this issue?
As I said in my comment to this string – ouch! You’ll note above some commenters questioned the motives of the author, who is a political consultant. Documenting whether this was “astroturfing” on behalf of a client is not the topic of this post. But a cursory web search does turn up articles saying this group is sponsored by AT&T and supports that company’s anti-Net Neutrality efforts.
This content shows no topic mastery, no understanding of the audience and supplies no responses to any of the negative comments. Even a sincere mea culpa might have limited the damage here. The silence indicates that astroturfing or not, this sloppy content sharing was counterproductive.
Don’t let this happen to your content. Content shared should support your thought-leadership, not undermine it or raise questions regarding your motive. Make sure you – or the communications professional you’ve hired – know the topic, the targeted audience and are ready to defend your position in the market place of ideas.