I’m sure you’ve heard about U-Tube suing YouTube by now. Not intelligent. Not intelligent at all.
U-Tube has been handed a check for millions of dollars and they’re not smart enough to cash it.
Here’s the problem:
They complained a few weeks back that the site was being downed by heavy traffic as users looking for YouTube landed on their site instead, presumably by typing the wrong domain name. This downtime cost them a great deal of money in lost customers, they said. How big was the traffic spike? They claim unique visitors went from 1,500 to over 2 million per month. UTube has had to move hosts 5 times to cope with the traffic, with bandwidth bills increasing by a factor of 100, they claim. They registered the domain way back in 1996, so they have every claim to it – what’s more, they also argue that the UTube name is strongly tied to their identity.
Here’s what I would do:
- Change company URL. Inform all clients about 10 times.
- Put u-Tube.com on Google’s AdSense for Domains
- Watch the money roll in
Side benefit: Google will even host it for you.
Update: Sounds like U-tube wants a LOT of money:
[tags] u-tube, youtube, legal, money, AdSense, google, john koetsier [/tags]On Monday, Girkins told Reuters an intermediary who said he was acting on behalf of YouTube had offered $1 million to buy the Internet address, but he turned down the offer and was holding out for $2.5 million to $3 million.
I believe they are not interested in the millions of misguided visitors to their site. They can’t and they don’t want to monetize those visitors. they want to keep the domain and their business. The lawsuit gives them besides the chance to settle a fee for bandwith costs, the mediatization of the case which brings up links, more than visitors. Those they can monetize, because it will give them an advantage comparing to their competitors on the tubes related searches.
I agree with your first sentence. But if they thought for a second beyond the obvious and followed my suggestions, they’d have a no-brainer revenue stream for years and years and years. I wouldn’t say no to that.
[…] fact, I was just looking for a tube to buy the other day… Posted in Security | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top OfPage […]
if they did put a ppc parking page up wouldnt google be then able to win the domain off them ?
kym: nope, it’s a well-known and accepted strategy.
i guess they want the publicity asides the money..
[…] Last November when the Utube (piping company) and Youtube kaffufle hit, I said U-tube should take the traffic and run: […]