Morning Folks!!
What I will describe is nothing new. Been with us since the first shill bid at an auction. But what you are about to see will make even shills turn red. Company wide shills. Fakers.
We all do our best to get a running start when starting a new business. But when does a running start touch fraud? Or at the least misleading folks into believing something is more successful than it really is? In the domain industry seems way too often. And with what is coming, they may all do it to SURVIVE.
So these are prearranged deals with "Friends" and "Associates" and others that are FAKE. That are NOT an arm's length deal. That are simply to put out there to FOOL you. I guess it is not up to me to point out each case. Why should I take the risk? But I will do this so that you will be on alert. Some are going to be desperate and they will have to resort to fake sales to even stay in business.
They will feed bloggers the headlines and they will repeat, repeat, repeat. So the bloggers do THEIR dirty work. Hook, line and sinker.
Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain. "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on."
So lies spread fast while the truth sometimes has to be searched for. And they use domain bloggers to spread their lies.
Does the blogger have any responsibility in this? Interesting question and there will be interesting answers. I know they just want to "Play nice". But where exactly is the line?
Don't be a victim. At this stage most of you should be sophisticated enough to spot this crap. They play on your emotions and fears and dreams. Just be on the look out and separate the genuine from the fake. How do you know. Don't believe 99.99% of the BS you hear. Maybe a couple will be caught red-handed and will discourage others.
I am a numbers guy. I can spot BS numbers a mile away. The propaganda whores are going to be at full strength within the year. Fake deals, fake headlines, fake success and using unwitting bloggers and others looking for new content to drive the getaway car.
Rick Schwartz
fatih
hmm.who is this?
onlinedomain
I am not sure I know what you are referring at but I will take a guess.
Is this about new gTLDs?
I am waiting a lot of bullshit to hit domainers in the next 1-5 years.
There are maybe 10 generic and 5 geo new gtlds that are worth a few bucks. All the others are going to lie their way to success or die trying.
.xyz: Seriously? Give me a break…
Martin
The hype that surrounded .mobi now has me on guard !!!
experience over piece of paper
Some bloggers may take offense to this, but its true. Thanks Rick in posting this, that’s what a leader does.
Pleasing advertisers and on .gtld confusion.
Scott
Berkins is doing a good job of reporting actual gTLD news, especially when it comes to the struggles they are facing now thanks to Verisign and the like. It’s interesting to see how fervently people with a stake in the new gTLDs bite him for reporting news…like they want all the troubles now and in the future with this roll out to be muted so they can get in and out and make some money. What I find comical is the gTLDs registrars who throw out all these numbers of “expected earnings” on something that doesn’t even truly exist yet. There is no possible way to forecast sales on an intangible, yet-to-be created item. I guess everyone has a right to dream big. But when most of these dreams turn to nightmares there is going to be a lot of angry people out there with more than a few “I told you so” people coming their way.
CateTV (@CateTV)
Hopefully most folks know which bloggers “do their homework” like any other business. There are still great investigative journalists out there! Will be interesting to follow Jeff Bezos purchase of the Wasington Post
Josh
The first fraudulent domain deal I remember was beauty.cc for 1 million dollars. A scammy transaction designed to promote .cc
BullS
All you have to do is look at the advertisers on their blog, they are being bought with cheap advertising money NOT to tell the truth!
When they “write” how good the dot Shitwhatever, you know they are freaking lying.
Andrea Paladini
I think Rick is referring not only to new gTLDs, but also to fake deals, fake sales, manipulated auctions, etc …
Reality and news manipulation is the warfare tool of when you can’t hide anymore a “rotten” reality, or when you can’t fix anymore your “broken toy”, if you prefer.
There were in the past and there are so many cases nowadays in this world ;)
As regards the new gTLDs, I see Icann, registrars and lawyers eating almost all the pie … with very little left for other players.
Just my view tough.
Have a good time!
Andrea Paladini
*though (not “tough”), sorry for the typo ;)
florida
we don’t need new tlds. only great dotcoms!!! new tlds are going to be bought and sold for $80 bucks tops. wth . its time to jack up the price on dotcoms and stick with prices that are higher than a giraffes pussy and that will kill all new tlds!!!
Altaf
“Don’t be a victim.”
The victims know nothing of domains as they never read your posts or others’ valuable advice.
krishna
Domain registrars are the biggest culprits followed by some bloggers.
In India, Godaddy is promoting .co (not .com and .in). Bigrock is promoting .biz.
Business owners may have their own interests but responsible peole like bloggers should not encourage such activities.
Thank you Rick.
Ian Andrew
You know the story about the Emperors new clothes?
Everyone, including himself, says how wonderful his special new robes are.
Except he is butt naked.
Then.. one small boy says “he is not wearing any clothes”.
Wait, what’s this?
I can see 1300 emperors coming over the hill towards us…
Stu
Seriously look at the hype with .xxx what a sham that tld has been the rest will follow.
Truth be told
Rick,
Unfortunately this is true. However, not all bloggers are naive, some know very well that a newly registered name does not get thousands of hits overnight…but they gotta make some money too. Sometimes even $200 pays for that gas bill when business is just slow.
The worst part of this though is that many happen trust those “bloggers” so…are the bloggers helping create those artificial numbers too!?
onlinedomain
Rick,
it’s funny how you write a vague post and then let us spill our guts out!
:)
Rick Schwartz
It’s called market research. :-)
Joe Parvin
Rick, I see you’ve adopted the natural language sense of “lie”, which I take to mean an intent to mislead or deceive. I like what you’ve done. “Plausible deniability” doesn’t work here as protection against an accusation of lying. Liars are everywhere, and when cornered, they appeal to some relatively modern formal true-false truth table kind of analysis, which was never intended to apply to social behavior or ordinary discourse. Because the applicable sense of the word “lie” is not formal, we can sometimes reasonably disagree on what is a lie. But the examples you’ve given seem clearly to involve attempts to mislead, so for me – as for you – it’s straight out lying. The deceivers are liars, period. If they try to rationalize or deny it to themselves, they “lie in their hearts”. Of course there are “white lies” meant to protect against unavoidable intrusive inquiries or the feelings of another, but the serious lies you write about inflict real harm on others.