As I sit here in the Newark airport tonight exhausted from a busy week and knowing I have a long travel night ahead due to delays I wanted to at least put a few words out about the GREAT transaction that Michael Berkens, Ammar Kubba, and Rick Schwartz had with Meet.Me.

Since the launch of .ME was announced a few years back I could see the potential for this to be a domain extension with legs, even though .COM was the default there is always room for a disruptor to come around. By no means am I saying .ME is unseating .COM but if you keep up with the list of new company launches on TechCrunch.com it would be hard to argue that .ME is not holding its own as far as brandable names go.

If you have not read the news, check out the post on TheDomains.com about the $450,000 sell of Meet.me after an investment of just under $6,000 a few years back. As Mike Berkens put it in a comment on the post, and I paraphrase, thats a better return than the stock market these days.

This name is quite possibly the perfect .ME. In both the generic sense (i.e. come MEET me) and in a more product based sense. I have worked in the communications industry since 1996, and on a daily basis I have either been on or pitched features to telecommunication companies based on Meet Me Conferencing. So it makes complete sense that a conferencing company would by this perfect domain name for the industry.

Ammar Kubba, one of the owners of the name, had this to say:

I've always been an advocate of "brand" domains, more focused on the branding and marketing potential rather than the type-in traffic.  Meet.me is perfect example... a global brand in the making.  The buyer already owned meetme.com, yet they saw the power and potential of the shorter and more intuitive meet.me brand.  .COM is (and most likely will continue to be) king, but there's still plenty of opportunity in alternative TLDs, if you can be creative, entrepreneurial and patient.

As someone who has put quite of bit of investment in some quality .ME domains names both personally and within LocalTek.com I am happy to see that .ME awareness continues to grow.

Also, once again, congrats to Natasa and Predrag from Domain.Me by association. All people involved in this deal from the domain industry are top notch and good people. Nice to see this happen to good people.

I want to thank Sean Stafford from DomainGraduate.com for allowing me to post his comment on a Facebook post I had made, consider this a guest post on my blog. I am sure there are many readers that will disagree with Seans point of view (and mine by extension) but what makes this country great is that we have the right to have opinions. On Facebook I actually had someone delete me as a friend thanks to my political views not matching theirs. Well that seems very Un-American to me.

Rather than me continue here is a great comment by Sean:

The banks and the investment houses should have been allowed to fail. They should have never received the bailouts to begin with. Who gave the money to Wall Street? The Government. The USA is in debt because of the Government, not because of Wall Street. The Government had no business giving bailout money to anyone.

The protesters should be rallying to limit the Government's spending or impeaching the so-called "President" for pushing through the bailouts and allowing this sad state of affairs, not raising a battle cry to tax or give free health care, or free debt forgiveness.

Socialism and overspending is what got the country into this problem in the first place and socialism is the reason why the country as a whole is falling apart. Taxing the rich and having what looks to be a Phish concert in Zuccotti Park does nothing to alleviate any of the aforementioned problems. Just because the rich get taxed doesn't mean the Government stops spending. And after the rich get taxed...what then? The middle class is then the next in line as the lower class already doesn't pay any taxes. Even if a bunch of taxes were levied against the rich it wouldn't pay for all the debt the USA has or even come close.

While I think a lot of CEO's are paid wayyyyy to much, that doesn't hurt me or anyone else in the slightest and it's not my business to be concerned as long as that money was made in an honest manner. If someone is able to make a mint, good for them, as long as it's done honestly. Trying to tax more money from honest working people to pay for the Government's injustices is not only unfair, it's criminal.

Perhaps it's the Government who should be held accountable instead of people who work for a living and pay taxes?

Want to see what happens when bits of capitalism are removed and pieces of socialism are put in its place? Well....I guess that's what we are currently watching unfold, and it's damn ugly.

Thanks Sean for letting me post this spot on comment.

And a little excerpt from a comment that I think says alot as well:

Maybe people should protest the government that has made them feel dependent on it rather than independent of it.

Yesterday Owen Frager sent out a great read in his newsletter, after reading I asked for permission to repost at Owen graciously agreed. I am posting unedited, for more information on Owen you can check out Frager.us or FragerFactor.blogspot.com. Owens article does a great job of explaining what many people have forgot, salesmanship matters to a business, its all about relationships, and on top of that its important to not try to hold on to what has been, but look at what will be or even more important, could be. Happy reading! Good Morning Folks,

Change is one of the most guaranteed things in life, but few people want to accept that fact, and fewer can deal with it.

==> Salesmanship: Ultimately, Nothing Else Matters

Just look at history and you don't have to go far back to see how fast things can change. Take 250 years ago. That's not very far when you think about it. The United States of America didn't even exist. Look how much this one little band of rebels against the British monarchy accomplished in that time. We took on the most powerful nation in the world at the time and kicked ass and started our own country from scratch.

Go back 500 years ago. What did the United States look like then? There was nothing here but Indian tribes. No buildings. No roads. No corporations. No electricity. No water systems. No airports. No cars. No financial system. No banks. It was better than when the dinosaurs ruled our continent but not by much.

What was life like 5,000 years ago on this planet? Civilization was just starting to take root.

Let's move up in time. When I grew up we had 3 major tv networks and 3 UHF stations. TV was in black and white. There were no cell phones. No personal computers. No video games. No Internet. None of the great stuff like we have today. I remember going to the World's Fair and seeing the World of Tomorrow pavilion and being totally fascinated by what visionaries expected the world to be like in the 21st century and what has come to be was even beyond that vision.

But the bottom line is time changes everything and does it continuously. It is a destroyer and creator both. It 's the way the Universe operates and we and everything on this planet are at it's mercy. In 125 years from now all 6 Billion people that are here today will be long gone. We'll all be nothing but dust and ashes. That's a hard reality to swallow but that's the fact of life and the worst aspect of change which is accepting the ultimate component of change which is death. In a few more Billion years no life will exist at all on Earth. The Sun will have grown into a Red Giant star past our orbit and incinerated our beautiful planet. So the point is the clock is ticking and everyone and everything exists on borrowed time.

The world is in financial chaos right now. But there is a reason it is and change will heal it. There was gross exploitation in the financial systems and capital markets of the world. There was excessive and charlatan like manipulation of money and wealth. There was total ignorance of the primary law of nature that nothing is forever and denial of the fact that real estate could not continue to rise in price year after year without a matching rise in incomes and buyers to support that ponzi game.

But, change is remarkably efficient at taking out what is not right, what is not healthy, what is not good and productive, and what is no longer needed in a system. In that respect change is positive and it is vital. Change kills things and at the same time change gives birth to brand new things and brand new opportunities. Change is what we need right now and it is doing its job vorociously to get us back to a solid financial foundation again.

So to succeed when everything is falling apart you merely have to accept the reality and destructiveness of change and join its side and adapt as things are changed. Don't fight it, because you can never win trying to keep and maintain what needs to be changed. This is when those who know how to do well when life becomes overwhelming and each day brings another unforeseen punch in the face from change, thrive and succeed most.

The key is to make change your partner and look for the brand new opportunities that are being created from the destruction and cleaning out of the economy. The new gardens that change is now planting and seeding.

You have to be an optimist and creative, pessimism and doing things the same way will take you down the toilet with everything else going downhill now. The strong will survive this mess and actually prosper from it. The weak will not. That's just how it is in life. You've got to take your pick which side of the fence you want to be on.

From a practical perspective, there's a great amount of inefficiency and unproductiveness in many aspects of business these days. You can go to any mall in the US and it all looks the same. You can instantly spot the stores that are well managed, with great staff, great products, great marketing, good value, good prices, etc. and those that are not. The stores going out of business deserve to and need to. They are not being run well or what they are selling is no longer marketable. And that's the bottom line. You can only get away with running a business badly for so long and then change will take you out.

I find it amazing how cluelessly and bureaucratically most businesses are run. It's a wonder they survive for as long as they do. In today's dynamic world things move and change at a lightning pace. You have to be fast and nimble to adapt and keep up with it each day. The dinosaurs in business are getting killed because they are just that running their businesses like dinosaurs and not able to keep up anymore. Someone is doing a better job. Someone has better trained salesmen. Someone has more innovative products or services. etc. etc.

When my friend Kevin was in high school in Philadelphia he worked in a local department store in the men's clothing department. He thought he was the only one who actually WORKED in my department. Most of the other salesmen would stand around either chatting or pretending to be doing something. When he didn't have a customer to wait on, he would go around and straighten up his area and make sure it looked pristine. When that was done he would pickup the phone and call his customers and tell them about upcoming new styles coming in and sales for the next week. Kevin was the only salesman in the entire store that would ask customers for their first name and phone number to keep in touch with them and build a relationship with them.

Kevin manager, Dan Bonner, said he'd never seen anyone do the things he did in all his decades of retailing. He'd never seen anyone look so happy to be working. He would even organize all the inventory in the back stock rooms perfectly which wasn't even in my area of responsibility. His sales per hour for the store were 4 times and higher to the norm and higher than anyone else. Customers would come in the men's department and specifically ask for Kevin to shop with them and help select their clothes and suggest what'd look best on them. They obviously loved the fact that someone actually enjoyed and was enthusiastic about waiting on them, and showed a genuine interest in them.

How many retail clerks are you on a first name basis with? How many retail clerks know what style and color shirts you prefer when you shop? Salesmanship is an art and most companies don't have any real salesmen working for them that truly enjoy what they do, go the extra mile for their customers, nor build any genuine relationship with their customers. This is one of the biggest problems and deficiencies in business today. And this permeates into other aspects of businesses as well. Management at most companies is atrocious and incompetent. They don't know what they're doing and most times they are just "coasting" instead of doing what they're supposed to do which is managing and building business.

I could go on and on. The mess, mismanagement, and incompetence out there permeates so much of our lives today. In business, big and small. In government, federal, state, and local. Even in the way families are run and kids are raised. So many people just don't know how to do things the right way anymore, have no enthusiasm, and aren't productive.

So I believe it's necessary right now to let all the crap crumble. Let things that aren't right fall apart and fade and be replaced by better things. It's going to be painful and much of what we've grown to think of as forever, like the value of real estate, we will have to accept it really wasn't and will not be so in the future. Don't feel vulnerable and scared, nothing is forever anyway, we're all here on borrowed time, so just accept that reality, smile, work hard, create and innovate new things and enjoy living in the chaos. We all have talent and lots of skills. More than most. People in here will do fine because we are Entrepreneurs and are used to "dancing" with business challenges every day.

The quote that always comes to mind at times like this, by Napoleon Hill, and which you can use in your life to truly relax your soul, quit worrying about everything which you have no control over anyways, and attain inner peace of mind with is:

"Ultimately, Nothing Matters!"

In the big picture of the Universe, we are all just dust in the wind . . .

Now get to work, ignore the negative energy, stay positive, smile, be happy, and energize your mind to its maximum potential to think of new ideas, create, innovate and build your business.

Have a GREAT day!

Owen

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"Simple is harder" - Steve Jobs

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In a world that is lead by real time information and search and reacting to friends posting links on social sites sometimes taking a longer view of what people could be interested in can pay off when developing a new website.

This past year when first working with the Castello Brothers on Grape.com there was planning that was done around what content to post as the site started to ramp up. One thing people like is lists, its been proven time and time again lists of things do great. We did quite a bit of research on what types of things people searched for as it related to wineries and went from there.

One thing that surprised some as a choice was an idea that someone else actually gave to me, I would not of thought of it, but the idea stuck and is paying off now. It was something that would not of been on anyones mind at the time but now that its October it is on peoples minds, that term, Haunted Wineries.

Its something that gets very little search traffic for the majority of the year but while in Google Analytics earlier today looking at various sites I took a look at noticed something interesting, here was the last several searches, and they all came within the past hour:

Americas Most Haunted Winery

Haunted Wineries

Haunted Winery

And all of those were searched for a few times, now here is the really fun part. I happened to be watching a show on the Travel Channel about the most haunted places in the US and they were doing a segment on the most haunted winery in American, the Marjim Manor. So it was all very timely but a fun thing to see real time how a show can affect people sitting on their laptops searching while they watch.

So, whats the point, if you are building a content rich site around a topic, think long term about what the users may be interested in, planning your SEO around this can be very valuable and bring you very targeted visitors and allow you to sell seasonal ad packages or products.

Hope this helps someone that may be planning content for a site.

If you are on Facebook or pay attention to social media news whatsoever you have taken a look at Facebook Timeline.

One of the most visual differences between the previous Facebook profile layout compared to the new layout is the cover photo for your Timeline. As soon as I setup Timeline on my account I knew people were going to be all over this niche market. It was pretty obvious people would be able to use this visual space to create unique and creative pictures to either a) market something or b) show their true personality.

There are several different sites that have already popped up, by no means have I tested any of these so I am not vouching for any so results may very but here are just a couple that I have noticed, the top one was mentioned in a blog post on AllFacebook.com:

FirstCovers.com

CoverPhotoz.com

Also, there have been some great posts on several blogs with several creative profiles, here is a post on Mashable to take a look at: 10 Designs That Will Blow You Away

I look at these new photos as no different than headers on a website, I really want to put some thought into how I want to use that space. Although my Facebook personal profile is for personal with only a small amount of business mixed in, at the end of the day its a great place to promote the businesses I am involved in since many people know me through those businesses, I can see the "header" area being a valuable place to promote that.

As the 800 million users on Facebook have Timeline enabled on their accounts this niche market will create a great market for those with graphic skills looking to make a quick buck on people wanting to be creative.

Do you plan on doing something creative with your Facebook Cover Photo? Post your ideas or link to your profile. I am still coming up with ideas for mine.

I have not blogged about domain names much lately but to my domainer friends, do not worry, my heads still int he game. Tonight I witnessed a domain fail that was worth blogging about.

Typically I fall on the side of the business owner when people complain about bad domain name selections, most small business owners do not have a marketing team or have not been educated on what constitutes a good or bad domain name, as an industry we have not educated the market as much as we would like to think we have. That said, many small businesses, especially in this market, do not have the budget.

But in this case, we are talking about a "business" with a significant budget and a real marketing budget that totally misses the mark when it comes to their marketing effort.

The marketing pitch they are giving talks about everything revolving around "YOU" as an individual. A quick search of YouTube shows several customers recorded which means that there has been real budget put behind this project.

Now, to my complaint, as everyone well knows that has followed me in the domain name industry, I am a believer in being able to develop extensions if you take the time to brand and market and search optimize properly. In many cases, based on a limited budget when first launching a project most startups cannot afford the high cost of entry for quality .COM domain names that we all love.

Well, Fontbonne is not a small startup, they are a well established college with a solid reputation. For reference their main website is Fontbonne.edu

Oh wait a second, if you type in FBYou.net guess where it goes, yep you got it, Fontbonne.edu.

And it goes there with no special content based on coming from the domain name advertised in the commercial (although I would hope they are at least tracking how much traffic is coming from the commercial efforts this way).

The problem I have with all of this is that the .COM is a parked domain on Bodis.com, the domain owner looks to be in China. I would expect there is little to no type-in traffic to FBYou.com that occurs when these commercials are not running. I would be extremely surprised if Fontbonne tried to actually acquire this domain. I would make a pretty solid assumption that their marketing team went with what they could hand register rather than paying what would be I would assume a pretty nominal cost to acquire the .COM.

For an effort like this, with a real budget behind it, there is no excuse for a real marketing team to not make the right decision and either A) pick a better domain or B) acquire the .COM.

So now, I would bet a good portion of type-in traffic is going to that parked page instead of to the Fontbonne.edu main page, in reality in this case they would of been completely better off just using the Fontbonne.edu domain as it is easier to remember and likely well known to those that have been researching schools in the area anyway.

I will give a small business owner the benefit of the doubt on domain name selection, but someone that is educating people on business and marketing and how it works in the real world needs to make better decisions.

If you did not watch the Facebook F8 Keynote today you missed out on the major changes coming to Facebook, you should be able to see the recorded keynote at F8.Facebook.com if you want to get an idea of what is coming.

One thing to note, and a year ago it would of been a big announcement in and of itself, Facebook has 800 millions users now. That is an amazingly huge number that goes to tell you that as much of a waste of time some people feel Facebook is no one really cares, we use it, period.

There has been plenty of whining and complaining on Facebook changes the past couple days, simple changes like the new combined news feed and the news ticker that shows light weight activity on the right side of the screen. BTW, if you have an issue with all the change I have a copy of Windows 95 I can sell you, and if you buy today I will throw in a free Motorola RAZR:)

Well, if those changes have got you all in a tizzy just wait until you see whats coming next, if you have not heard Facebook is launching 2 major new updates to the platform that will be rolling out to the users over the next couple months. One is called Facebook Timeline the other is a new way to look at social apps, it call comes down to being able to perform a VERB on any NOUN, instead of simply hitting the like button on a book you can READ a book. This may seem simple on the face of it, but in big picture impact is exponential in terms of connecting people to things.

If you think about the ability of your friends to say they are "cooking lasagna" or "reading Bringing Down The House" enables you to discover items that you would of never thought of, the great example of using Spotify combined with Facebook to literally listen to music real time with your friends as it flows through your Facebook stream is amazing.

One concern about all this new posting of reading, writing, running activity is that it would flood the news stream. Well that is not the case, that is what the nice new ticker on the right side will do such a great job handling, all light weight activity will be put there, out of the major news feed.

Here are a couple links to details of the new features:

Facebook Timeline

More Facebook Timeline

I am in Austin, TX for the next few days attending ITEXPO West, its a great event with a ton of forward looking sessions. I will be sitting on the panel titled: How MNOs Can Leverage a Cloud Platform to Deliver Unified Communications

My panel session is tomorrow at 11AM, if you are in town for the event feel free to shoot me a message if you want to meet up.

Although a good portion of my time will be spent in and around the GENBAND booth I hope to hit some of the great session tracks they have around Social CRM and other areas.

Anyone that has been around me the past 16 years knows my world has been all things VoIP and next generation communications, ITEXPO is a great show to get the latest on whats happening in that world and how it effects both the enterprise and the service provider.

As many people that read my blog know I am an avid cyclist. I have been on the bike for years and obey the laws and in general give much more leeway to vehicles than required by law out of courtesy since many drivers do not understand that cyclists have just as much right as they do to be on the road.

So, that said, for many years I have dealt with people driving by in their rusted out pick up trucks making comments while they try to fit behind their steering wheels drinking their 44 oz Big Gulp. Its the typical, not so original comments that they give, always the same, "nice spandex shorts" or "go Lance Armstrong", then a finger usually pops up (pretty sure that one finger is how far they can count, also if you take offense to the above then you are not realizing I take more offense based on what happened below). I, being me, always mouth back, and until tonight they always kept going.

Well, tonight that all changed. After finishing my fastest ride in a long time (2o MPH average on a hilly 21 mile route) we were coming back through town when a white mid-size car came up along side us, to be REAL CLEAR, myself and the rider with me were on the side of the road and not impeding traffic. The wife, in all her wisdom, decides to show the finger she can count to one with and starts mouthing obscene comments. I did the same and showed her I could count to one as well. She had also made some pretty bad comments that were so ridiculous a person could not take offense since they were so kindergarten.

At the stop sign, her husband decided to pull across and get out of the car and want to fight, I just rolled through slowly and said whatever and rolled on. I am 37, almost 38 year old man who does not live on an elementary playground, that said, I am big enough and fit enough to hold my own and was more than prepared to do what is necessary to make sure he realized that he picked the wrong person on the wrong day.

About a half mile up the road the car pulled up and parked, the person decided to park on the shoulder and then they blocked traffic and came after us, not being one to ever runaway, I stopped, unclipped from my bike, as he came up, he was mouthing along with his wife. I won't go into all the details of the mouthing, but I will admit I was giving right back. But the most important part is the guy actually was threatening violence and took a swing at me, I grabbed his wrist since it was not a full power swing. And we kept arguing.

Well, knowing that this needs to be fixed, I got their license plate number, called the police, and filed a report, since I had an actual witness, he also filed a witness report.

Locally cycling has grown and most of the leaders in the community are active cyclists, they understand that there needs to be education. I was happy to have one of them call me tonight about this incident after hearing about it. Kudos to the community leaders for being active in making sure we have a safe environment to ride in. It is people like the angry people tonight that are at fault, not us cyclists.

It looks like there is a good chance the story will go in the local newspaper and it will be mentioned with the license plate number of the couple in my twice a month radio show. It was also posted on Hicktown.com, here is the link: Watch Where You are Going $%$%$

For the record, they have a Missouri license plate, it is PJ5 K4Y , for those other cyclists, note it and watch out for them, this is a public service:)

Also, for the record, I was once 244lbs, its tattooed on my wrist, so I understand what its like to be that guy with the 44 oz Big Gulp....

Top app developers from GENFuzion Developer Community recognized for innovative applications powered by A2 Communications Application Server

Frisco, Texas, August 30, 2011 – GENBAND, a leading developer of IP infrastructure and application solutions, today announced the results of its first GENFuzion™ Developer Challenge, recognizing the top app developers from across several strategic categories, including Lifestyle, Productivity, Mobility and Unified Communications. Designed to expand third party applications powered by the GENBAND A2™ Communications Application Server, the Developer Challenge successfully launched the GENFuzion Developer Community earlier this year.

GENBAND awarded first place honors to Switchpoint Solutions, who developed a queuing alert application for businesses such as restaurants to better manage customer wait times. Cliniconex was named second place winner with their stock tracker alert application, designed to notify stock brokers or stock traders when configurable thresholds have been reached and allowing them to communicate with each other faster to buy or sell stocks. SaskTel’s IDnoodle Department received third place honors for their myCentrex application, an end user web portal and mobile smartphone application that enhances Centrex service customer retention while enabling the service provider business case for TDM to IP Centrex network transformation.

“We are entering a new era in telecommunications, as companies like GENBAND are enabling developers to rapidly supply service providers with compelling and potentially revenue-generating applications,” said Joe McGarvey, Principal Analyst with Current Analysis and GENFuzion Developer Challenge Judge. “The speed with which the developers created such value added and viable applications for service providers was one of the many surprising elements of this challenge. The creativity of the winners represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is to come as a result of tools and resources now available to the service provider development community.”

“The immediate and powerful impact of opening GENBAND APIs to developers and providing them a collaborative testing environment for application development has been extraordinary,” said Mehmet Balos, Chief Marketing Officer at GENBAND. “Our first ever GENFuzion Developer Challenge has unleashed outstanding innovation and proven to be a highly effective accelerator for fostering all types of application development for service providers to leverage. We congratulate the top three winners of our challenge along with several honorable mentions, which are all already connecting with new potential customers as we facilitate go-to-market opportunities through our GENApps Showcase.”

For a complete list and description of the 2011 GENFuzion Developer Challenge winners, categories and awards, clickhere. All contest participant applications and winners are also posted and promoted on the GENBAND GENApps Showcase.

About GENBAND
GENBAND is a global leader of IP infrastructure and service solutions, enabling fixed, mobile and cable service providers around the world to evolve communications networks through IP innovation. The Company offers market-leading Switching, Networking and Service solutions, with products deployed in over 600 customer networks spanning more than 80 countries. GENBAND is headquartered in Frisco, Texas, and has operations in 50 countries. To learn more, visit us on the web at www.genband.com.
GENBAND, the GENBAND logo and icon are trademarks of GENBAND.

Contact:
Kim Lee
GENBAND
+1.972.265.3766
kim.lee@genband.com