President-Elect Obama Almost “Gets It”
In the domain industry, it is often referred to as “getting it”, when a big company or brand or figure goes out and purchases a category-killer generic domain to market their product.
Elliot posted last night that “President-Elect Obama Gets It” in reference to him using Change.gov as his online media platform.
I was having a discussion with Jaime this morning about how that was cool that he is at least technology-savvy, even if we do not agree with all of his policies. But then Jaime pulled up Google Trends and realized that everyone was in fact searching for “change.com” instead. Boy were those viewers they surprised when they pulled up that site and saw a lingerie model. I’m sure that was not the result that Obama was looking for.
Interestingly enough, the second most searched for domain was “obama4change.com”, which when I just pulled it up was a dead link. Some other owner is missing out on good traffic there at the moment.
The end result here is a lot of well-intentioned viewers not getting to the information that they are looking for. It is very disappointing, because Obama fan or not, I think it is important for everyone to be able to see what he is doing, what his plans are, who he selecting for his cabinet, etc.
I’m know he has the funds to go and try to purchase Change.com, but that is probably not worth it to him at the moment. I also do not think that his team is aware of the traffic they are losing with this domain. It’s not that .gov is a bad extension for a political web site, it’s just that .com is a brand and a default.
My only hope is that he picks a solid Chief Technology Officer (a new position he is talking of creating) who “gets it”. My vote would be for my ex-thesis advisor, Ed Felten, but I’m sure Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, or Steve Ballmer would probably do just fine in the role. If not, maybe they’ll bring in a good domainer to help them clean up the potential mess in the domain space.
*image source: change.com, google.com
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Change.com would be an excellent choice for the President-Elect. We’re hoping he picks up change.mobi as well, to match obamamobile.mobi (currently not resolving but which was active during the campaign).
I think the point of the post was that he has the best term for a government office, but if he wants to really get all of the natural traffic, he needs the .com brand. Don’t see any reason for the .mobi. He can just make a mobile-compatible site for the .gov (or .com).