Sun 5 Aug 2007
Do I detect rats leaving sinking ships?
Anyone who knows anything about the Internet will know that an important part of success online is a good product or service and similarly that what’s as important is the domain name you use. Vanchau Nguyen knew that, which is why when he was creating an easy to use message board system, he knew the domain name ezboard.com would be part of its success.
Fast forward seven years and ezboard, Inc.’s CEO Robert Labatt announces the next generation of ezboard will be Yuku. Not exactly a great name to start off with and they settle on an aboriginal word for ‘tree’ as the supposed genesis of the name.
Over the coming year, Labatt announced that all ezboards would eventually move to the new Yuku platform and that instead of pnnn.ezboard.com/bboardname they would become boardname.yuku.com. So when you make such a fundamental change, one of the key elements of your business has to be protection of your domain name, especially when you’re running your business largely on venture capital.
Indeed, your VC backers would probably want to see up to date risk assessments for the business and a key element of that assessment would be the domain names.
I wonder what they would make, then, of the recent change of registrant for the domain name Yuku.com.
If you lose control of the domain name, the new registrant could use it for their own ends or point requests for the domain to ‘dodgy’ content or to link farms, for instance.
So the recent changes to the registration of Yuku.com are very strange indeed and one wonders what ezboard’s backers would make of them:
yuku.com - 2007-05-18 13:46
Registrant:
ezboard Inc
564 Market Street
705
San Francisco, CA 94104
US
415 773 0400×255Domain Name: YUKU.COM
Administrative Contact:
Labatt, Robert
564 Market Street
705
San Francisco, CA 94104
US
415 773 0400×255Technical Contact:
Gakovic, Ceco
564 Market Street
705
San Francisco, CA 94104
US
415 773 0400×214yuku.com - 2007-08-05 23:29
Registrant:
Expert In The House, LLC
650 Delancey Street
102
San Francisco, CA 94197
US
415 205 7465Domain Name: YUKU.COM
Administrative Contact:
Labatt, Robert
650 Delancey Street
102
San Francisco, CA 94197
US
415 205 7465Technical Contact:
Gakovic, Ceco
564 Market Street
705
San Francisco, CA 94104
US
415 773 0400×214
So who is “Expert in the House, LLC”? Well coincidentally, Robert Labatt used to sell networking DVDs through their web site http://www.expertinthehouse.com/about.html.
Maybe Labatt has plans for the domain name if things go wrong (or worse…) at ezboard, Inc.? Or maybe it’s Just Another Ezboard Cock-Up…
2 Responses to “Yuku Domain Name”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Blue wrote: So who is “Expert in the House, LLC”?
The address leads not to a dedicated business office but a private residence.
I’m sure there’s a desk and a PC somewhere to supply part-part-part-time “visionary leadership” from.
What a change from ezboard’s dozen or so employees and their offices! Now everyone is remote, sub-contracted, free-lanced and open-sourced.
Now if only they could have similar success…
August 8th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Rumor has it, Ceco is no longer with ezboard/Yuku and a lot of the employee involved in the creation of Yuku have actually found new employment. If you look at Alexa from March 2004 to present day you will see a steady decline.