It is Saturday, again!!

Happy birthday Michael Jackson! Yes, Michael Jackson was born 51 years ago, today. Last night I went to watch the premiere of The Final Destination in 3D at the London O2, the venue where Michael Jackson should have been having his This Is It shows.

As we were walking pass the entrance to the Arena, I couldn’t help noticing how ghostly that section was, a far cry to what it would have been, if Michael Jackson was still alive and performing at his concerts. The concerts would have run from July to early next year.

A lot of has been happening in the domaining world this week.

Twitter - @ebusinessnames
Firstly, I must express my gratitude and appreciation to all our Twitter followers. eBusinessDomains.com has now passed the significant milestone of 10,000 Twitter followers. We appreciate everyone who has found it worthy to follow our tweets.

eBusinessDomains.com only signed up to Twitter 6 months ago. At first I was only interested in having eBusinessDomains.com following domainers. However, I quickly realised that this was narrow-minded thinking. I operate a business that I am interested in taking to the masses, especially people outside of the domain industry. I cannot afford to join the group of domainers behaving as if the domain industry is some sort of exclusive club.

The domain industry needs fresh blood and capital. We need brighter minds and people from all walks of life. What better way to engage this crowd than via Twitter?

As I have said before I use Twitter solely for business purposes. So I do not really mind if I follow serial killers or Fortune 500 CEO’s, and vice versa.

On a weekly basis I receive numerous Friend Requests via Facebook. If you are one of such persons making those requests, please don’t take it personal. I only add people that I have personally met face-to-face to my Facebook inner circle. Twitter is business, Facebook is personal.

Moving on.

Symbolics.com
DN Journal broke the news about the domain Symbolics.com been sold for the first time since it was registered, almost 25 years ago. Symbolics.com is a very historic domain name as it was the first domain name that was ever registered. It was registered on March 15, 1985. Since then, over 180 million domains have been registered.

Symbolics.com was acquired by XF.com investments, whose CEO is Aron Meystedt. XF.com Investments owns other premium domain names such as  iBlog.com, HY.com, March.com, Copies.com, TrafficEstimate.com and ImageSharing.com.

What is inspiring about this story is that Aron is only 29 years old! He is surely on to something. I said before that the most successful domainers are almost never heard of. They spend time strategising and making their fortunes rather than seeking the limelight.

Some weeks ago Aron asked me if I was interested in becoming an expert contributor to a new project he was launching soon. The project would be dedicated to SEO, web traffic and monetizing domains.

That project (the redesign and relaunch of TrafficEstimate.com) went live on Wednesday night. Click here to read my first article WHOLESALE vs. RETAIL Domain Monetization.

Frank Schillings Interview
Now I have always heard or read articles about Frank Schilling, who many are claiming to be a legendary domainer. I have never met him, heard him speak or even done much research about him. I have only read his last post on his blog, SevenMile.com, which is a great read.

Early this week I read an interview he did recently, and I can now see why this guy is a genius. You can read the interview here. After reading the interview, I felt at peace, for want of a better term/word. Most of what Frank said is what I have been preaching about over the past year.

I am not going quote chunks of the interview, as the whole thing was juicy. But I like the part where on the subject of domain valuation, Frank said:

” A lot of this is gut instinct and common sense. You have to look at the meaning of the name, the products one can sell there, the size of the product’s market, the value of the product, the permanence of the product or service in commerce – A host of other parameters.”

”Seeing this stuff is second nature to some people”.

This interview confirmed what I have being thinking for a while now: No matter how much you preach or stand on top of the mountain and shout, some people will never get the importance of quality domains, and the concept of branding. If you don’t get it, you just don’t get it.

This post is getting too long now! The rest may not make sense to you if you don’t follow the domain space very closely. So, have a great weekend!

For those of you that are still reading …

Deep Domainer Meditation
I have been meditating on this one a lot!!

I love technology and appreciate what it can do. My web developers are always surprising me, but I think I have a certain level of knowledge of what technology can do, and what it CANNOT do.

Here is a scenario…

Let’s say you were selling domains names solely via a newsletter. Driven by poor sales, a bid to find some excuse for recent poor performance in a domain auction, an attempt at a poor PR stunt or a plea for sympathy, you come up with this idea that somehow, your newsletter buyers are approaching the sellers directly to make purchases. This is possible as the buyer can easily see who owns the domain via the Whois record.

Now it would not be in the best interest of the buyer to inform you, and the seller would not bother to tell you as well if he is getting a better deal directly from the buyer.

So HOW would you find out? What technology is out there that could possibly help you to find out if the buyers are approaching sellers directly?

How I see it, there is NONE, unless you are the CIA or MI5 monitoring people’s email addresses!

Even if you hire all the cheap labour in China or all of Asia, you still would not be able to find out.

In my honest opinion, this is how I think you would end up finding out, consistently and reliably:

If you want to give people the impression that you are not using your newsletter to try and dumb your own domains, and you want people to think that you are actually selling domains on behalf of other domain sellers, then you simply register your very own domains under different aliases. By the way, I don’t do that sort of thing.

When the buyer tries to bypass your domain newsletter and buy directly from the seller, guess what? The email lands straight in your inbox!!

People are just NOT that stupid!! Do yourself a big favour, don’t believe everything you read!

Moving on…

Michael Jackson, RIP
I am sure that you are now aware that I am one of Michael Jackson’s biggest fans! Yes he did many fantastic tracks. But I became a die-hard fan after watching this video some years ago. (If it doesn’t play below, watch it on Youtube here).

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I am not sure if there are any Twitter rules that were created to specifically eliminate the use of usernames that may infringe on registered trademarks.

With the growing popularity of Twitter, and the widespread knowledge and existence of domain squatting, it was only a matter of time before squatting wars reach Twitter.

I was in the process of some branding-related research when I stumbled upon a very interesting Twitter status of what seems to be the official Twitter page for Fly.com (@fly_com).

” @spam the @fly profile is a squatter”

At the time of writing, the Twitter account @Fly only had 2 tweets, which just barely says “Hello”. Looking a bit closer, I noticed that the first Tweet was made on 2nd March 2009, a month after the Fly.com domain name was sold for $1,760,000, on 3rd February. Perhaps the sale was reported around the beginning of March?

It should be interesting to see what happens next, if anything will happen in terms of the @fly Twitter account.

In my opinion, there is some form Twitter Squatting going on. I tried to secure the Twitter accounts for some domains that I intend to develop, only to find that the usernames are already taken. Most of them have no pictures, updates and/or even followers.

It is becoming obvious that not only has a company got to ensure that it secures the right domain name, but it has to ensure that it also secures the username for the domain/brand on major social networking sites.

The question is, how do Twitter squatters, if there are any, plan to benefit from this type of squatting?

Welcome to the new world of social networking media, and branding!

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Online social networking sites such as Twitter seems to be catching on like wildfire these days. We see recently where Twitter was used to effectively cover the protests in Iran, and even break the news about Michael Jackson’s death to many.

It would appear that everyone that can click a mouse is on Twitter.

However, a recent Harris Poll reports that only 5 percent of Americans are using Twitter so far. That means that there is only is 1 in every 20 Americans using Twitter.

The question is, where are the other 95%?  The 2008 population estimate for the United States is 304,059,724. That means that there are approximately 289 million American who are not using Twitter.

The Harris Poll also finds that although recent high-profile media coverage suggests that a large percentage of the US population participates in online social networking and microblogging, more than half of Americans (51%) do not use Twitter or participate in either of the two largest social networking sites - MySpace and Facebook.

The survey finds that just under half (48%) of US adults have either a MySpace or Facebook account, and that only 16% update their page at least once a day.

If, on the other hand, you prefer good news, this means that the upside for Twitter, the fastest-growing service in our time, hasn’t even begun to be realized.

Now lets compare this to the domain industry. I am not aware of any poll that researches the number of people who are aware of the domain industry, or the domain aftermarket in particular.

Judging by the number of members on the most popular forums, and by even adding an extra person for each member to represent the persons who are aware of the domain industry but chose not to participate in any domain forum, I would say that even 500,000 (half a million) people would be a generous figure.

Correct me if I’m wrong, as these are just wild estimates.

So, worldwide, less than a million people are unaware of the domain industry. Hey, there are 6 billion people in the world!

How do you view this? If you are a pessimist, then you would say that domaining is a complete waste of time.

If you are optimistic, and you should have all the rights to be if you are intelligent, then you would see nothing but pure opportunities.

We are the founders of what will be one of the greatest industries on planet earth!

I discovered the domain industry and domain aftermarket after reading an article, in which the author stated that, the buying and selling of domains is one of the very best ways to make money online.

It is not as easy as it sounds, but once you get the right formula and strategies, you may have the licence to print money, almost.

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People are predicting that social networking sites such as Facebook will become obsolete in the future. Some boasts about their preference to have real world friends rather than virtual friends.

I can’t speak authoritatively about Twitter as I am still exploring the world of Twitter mania. However, I have been using Facebook for over a year and a half now, and quite frankly it’s hard to imagine life without it.

As I mentioned before in a previous post, I only use Facebook for my personal lifestyle and close friends, while Twitter is used solely for business. It is just unwise to mix business and personal life in such a way unless you are an entertainer or something of that sort.

Living here in London, you get to meet a lot of people who are just “passing through”. They are here today and gone tomorrow. Some are just taking a quick vacation, while some are on something like a working holiday visa, where they work for a year, travel for another, then return home.

You meet terrific people who will impact your life. Whether they go back to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, Norway, America, etc., there is no better way to keep in touch than with Facebook.

With Facebook you can chat, send emails, share photos, share your status (news feed) and even connect with people that you thought you would never hear from again.

For me, two of the most useful tools that Facebook has are the “Events” and “Birthday” functions. A true friend never forgets your birthday, but that only works if one only has 5 friends. How do you keep track of hundreds of friends?

Facebook does a marvellous job in reminding me to wish people happy birthday. Sometimes writing “Happy Birthday” on someone’s Facebook wall can have more meaning and be more practical than sending them a text or birthday card through the mail.

With Facebook, I can cherry-pick which parties to go to. Every week someone is either having a birthday party, a leaving do, launching a business, having an after-party, celebrating the birth of a baby, or just gathering to have some good times.

When someone invites me to a party in person, I normally ask, “Is it on Facebook?” I am sure to remember the party if it is on Facebook. Plus I can get the details and directions from one source.

I could go on and on about how useful Facebook is to my personal life.

But how useful would Facebook be to my business life?

I don’t know. This is what I’m now setting out to find out.

Facebook states that user profiles should be connected to and be about an individual. Facebook has introduced “Pages” that can serve the social networking needs of businesses.

We have now created a Facebook Page for eBusinessDomains.com.

Quite a few major corporations have Facebook pages. There are even pages for politicians, musicians, actors, athletes, and anyone who is well known or is trying to get known. We are trying to get known here .

The “Pages” function a bit differently from profiles, in that everyone can access and view the information on your pages. With your user profiles (personal), you can limit the amount of information that is seen by anyone, including your friends.

Facebook, like Twitter is another way that companies can connect with their customers on a personal level.

I will keep you posted with our Facebook progress.

For now, the best way to stay in touch is to become one of our Facebook fans.

Click here to visit the eBusinessDomains.com Facebook Page.

Please don’t forget to follow us on Twitter as well.

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to use blogs to build your ebusiness. Today, I want to do the same for Twitter.

Again, I will make it clear from the outset that I’m no social media expert. I am writing from common sense and instincts here.

Twitter has gone mainstream. Everyone’s talking about it; it’s all over the media and companies are falling over themselves to get involved. Name any company, from the global giants to the local taco business. We have the celebrities, and we also have the average Joe’s. Everyone is going Twitter-crazy.

Business people with limited budget and resource will often ask whether they should use Twitter: what will it do for them, how should they use it, and is it worth the time involved? Is it a good Internet marketing tool?

For a small business, using Twitter is more about customer or prospect engagement than advertising or branding. However, by engaging customers and building a rapport, your brand becomes even more visible.

Twitter – like all social media - is all about creating conversations, rather than pushing out a one-way message. It can be an incredibly useful way of engaging with customers, prospects or influencers such as analysts or journalists or even your critics.

But as with any activity, assess the merits of using it before you jump in. Ask yourself the right questions.  What would be your main objective? Who are the people you want to reach? Are they (or their influencers) using Twitter (or are they likely to start soon - remember, it’s a fast-growing platform)? And do you want to start two-way discussions with them? Do you have the time to facilitate this two-way discussion in a consistent and sustainable way?

If the answer to these is no, then perhaps Twitter is not for you.

But if you are interested in talking to (not at) your audiences, then Twitter offers a simple, effective way for you to engage with and respond to people, really fast.

Using the search.twitter.com tool, you can find out what customers or prospects think about a company, or issue. It gives you the opportunity to respond directly to ideas and complaints; thank people for positive feedback; test new ideas for products or services; keep your target audiences up to date with news; or just keep involved with what people are doing in your industry. The good thing is that it can all be fun!

The best part about using Twitter is that it is free!

If you are going to get involved with Twitter, make sure you do it properly. Don’t bore people to death with what you had for breakfast, or use it as a glorified RSS feed. Your tweets should have a personal feel to them. No one wants some endless and meaningless RSS feed from your website, forum etc.

Send tweets about things that your audience will be interested in, and people interested in your area, industry, niche etc’ll soon follow you.

Tweet regularly, but not obsessively. Don’t pest people with your tweets. Think of it like a conversation at a party: no one likes the person who says nothing, nor the person who just can’t seem to shut up!

You can follow on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/ebusinessnames

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