Age old practice of grabbing names that ‘may’ become valuable has spread to all corners of the online world
If there’s a new buzz or a new technology out there on the horizon, and you want to exploit everything it has to offer online — then you’d better jump on it way before it goes viral.
That means register every domain name you can think of relating to the buzz, set up dozens of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts using the word, and keywords. Then, go to the Apple iPhone App store and register as many names as you can think of for iPhone apps.
This assures that once the phenomena hits, you’ll be ready.
Pick any word, term or name / noun in the English language and start searching. You’ll find that most variations on those words have been grabbed.
Well, if you actually did that, without a need for all the names other than self profiteering, then you would be ‘cyber squatting’. This is greatly frowned upon by the community, and illegal if anyone ‘else’ owns the property and decides to press charges.
It’s causing a lot of problems for new Twitter accounts as well as developers in the Apple Apps store…
Name Squat Trouble In App Store
Edward Kirk writes at iPhone Alley …
A UK-based iPhone app developer has pointed out a largely unheard phenomenon in the App Store that is causing legitimate developers a lot of trouble: app name squatting. Like domain name squatting, a developer can register an app under a name to make sure nobody else can have it, without even releasing an actual app.
Atomic Antelope explained on their site how an App Store name squatter had caused them trouble:
It turns out that squatters have moved into the app store. They’re worse than domain name squatters though, because you can’t even enter into negotiation with them. You don’t know who they are, or where they are. They take advantage of the fact that a developer can pretend to submit an app, but abandon their submission at the last moment, avoiding the need to actually create an application, but keeping hold of the app’s name. In limbo. Forever. These squatters are ruthless.
Squatters have been the bane of domains, MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and most other ‘popular’ online venues almost since the beginning.
When we tried to get a Twitter account for our domain, but of course every imaginable name using UG, UGN, UGNN, and so forth were all TAKEN … Most of which have no content what so ever. Someone registered them must to lock them up.
They hope to later approach YOU with an offer to SELL the name to you for your use.
This will only get worse, now that the U.S. has given up its control of the internet and ICANN. You can bet, it’s going to get ugly — worse of all, there’s nothing you or I can do about it. See: “The Internet’s Last Day”
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