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Are You the Master of Your Domain (Name)?

April 13, 2008 BY Mark Evans

Do you own your domain name – e.g. www.yourname.com?

I’m not sure what to make of it but owning your domain name seems to becoming a mini-trend, particularly if you have an online brand you want to nurture and/or protect.

A case in point is well known social media consultant Shel Israel, who had shelisrael.com registered by arch-nemesis Loren Feldman, who has been making a series of funny/nasty videos featuring Shel Israel (a naked puppet) interviewing people and other puppets.

Needless to say, Shel Israel (the social networking consultant) is livid at Feldman for taking his domain name. For his part, Feldman – the blogosphere’s agent provocateur – has no interest in selling or giving shelisrael.com to Israel.

Meanwhile, Paul Kedrosky, prolific blogger and venture capitalist, recently mentioned his interest in acquiring paulkedrosky.com from another Paul Kedrosky.

Sadly, I don’t own markevans.com. A certain Mark Evans in Texas owns it, although he doesn’t seem to be doing anything with it. I do, however, own markevans.ca, which is just fine, although I’d happily take markevans.com off Mark’s hands.

Update: Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if mark.com was available. It’s not but it’s a splog – sad.


More: Any discussion about being the master of your domain would be incomplete without a hat tip to Seinfeld.

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  • http://www.nametaggs.com Chris R

    It’s impossible for everyone to have their own name as a domain name. I believe having variations of your name, for instance mevans.com, or mark.com is sufficient. I personally have ragobeer.com and chrisragobeer.com . The good thing about it, at least for me is that there are not alot of nerds with the last name “ragobeer” :) . I’m trying to do some neat things with http://www.nametaggs.com to do something with this type of content..stay tuned :)

  • http://domainnames.your-inforcom.com/ inforcom

    Recently I read an interesting article on yahoo where they said that some parents have started among other things to buy and register domain names for their newly born babies.

    Yes, that is how serious some couples have taken this issue on owning and safeguarding you name.

  • http://www.newmediamike.com Mike Allan

    A number of years ago I did a check for mikeallan.com and it wasn’t available. So I totally forgot about it.

    With this recent shelisrael.com debacle I didn’t think to check again, but your post made me look.

    Sure enough – it is available! Or let’s make that WAS. I snapped it up as soon as I could.

    Not sure what I’ll do with it, but it’s mine now … all mine!

  • http://www.jezarnold.com/thirty jez

    Good Article! I own my domain, and would love to own the Jeremy one too.. (some kid who hasn’t updated in ages does). Its pretty important too own yourself. Also, try to own the name you use as your handle

    Its not a great cost to secure it, and one day you may use it or find another person with your name gets famous and you may make a little $$

  • http://www.simplehelp.net Ross

    This post was actually the last straw. I don’t _plan_ on having an online brand that relates to my name. Although with that said – and domains being so cheap to register – I snapped up rossmckillop.com this morning so the ross mckillop in the UK can’t.

  • http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

    Mike: Congrats on being the new owner of mikeallan.com! Enjoy!

    Ross: Glad you were able to get your domain as well. Who knows, maybe it will come prove to be useful somewhere down the road!

  • http://christine.net Christine

    Regardless of blocking others from using your name, or ‘owning your brand,’ etc…it’s just fun and convenient to have your own domain name.

    http://christine.net
    http://christineherron.com

    :D

  • http://www.srclarke.com Todd Mintz

    Owning your own name (if possible) as a dot com domain name is extremely important for personal reputation management…you should buy it immediately if available if you don’t have any plans for its use.

  • Pingback: Master of my own domain(s)

  • http://www.ericmartindale.com Eric Martindale

    Done and done. But I still want to know when we’re getting rid of TLDs…

  • http://www.garywill.com/ Gary Will

    If it hadn’t been for this post, I wouldn’t have realized that I registered garywill.com 10 years ago today. Better go get a cake. :-)

  • http://www.mappingtheweb.com Aidan Henry

    Interesting topic…

    FYI, AidanHenry.com redirects to MappingTheWeb.com. It works great with friends and family members. Usually, they forget the direct URL, but (hopefully) they don’t forget my name :)

    -Aidan

  • http://www.mattroberts.com matt roberts

    I got my domain name. I make a point of buying my friends domain names as birthday presents.