First Hand Lessons in Direct Navigation (aka Sergio Cotanzo you’re a disgrace and a cheat)
I was fooling around with Homethinking as usual, but mistyped the url, entering wwwhomethinking.com (no link love but I’m sure you can guess what the URL re-directs to from the title of this post).
A page full of real estate related sponsored links. Which an Italian named Sergio Cotanzo collects revenue from after registering the domain name a week and a half after we launched.
I am both appalled and somehow intrigued that there are people like Sergio in this world, sitting in his home in Piacenza preying off of the efforts (and stupidity) of people like me.
The larger folks like wwwyahoo.com and wwwgoogle.com seem to have it figured out. But other young startups like wwwindeed.com and wwwtrulia.com have been direct navigated as well.
Sergio, and other clowns like you, get a life.
C’mon, you’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.
I wonder how much it actually makes.
Obviously his income grows as the real Homethinking grows.
When are you are as big as Yahoo you will be able to buy it back off that guy for $100,000 or something.
[…] Not all talk of domain names has to be painful. Dennis Forbes posts a fascinating analysis of domain name availability. If you’re interested in anything faintly to do with the Internet, this is a excellent lens into the weird and wonderful web. […]
Standard practice for anyone planning on launching a serious internet venture should be to brainstorm and register commmon domains typos, mispellings, and related before announcing and launching. Unless you have a TM, these are fair game to third-parties as a general rule.
While not the most honorable of practices, from a legl perspective, its not your territory until you own it.