If you know about a new technology or some other tool that can help a friend or colleague, don’t hesitate to tell them. If your friend resists, but you KNOW it can help them, do whatever it takes to make sure they get the picture – especially if it’s free! I sometimes think people are all as knowledgeable about social media as I am, but my world is much different than the average person in that I am connected online 24/7.

I was a late Twitter adopter, but I have embraced it with for my blog and my developed websites. I believe it’s a great way to communicate, although I am guilty of primarily using it as an outlet to dispense news and links rather than to have a conversation. I have constantly told friends and colleagues they need to get a Twitter account before someone else gets “theirs.”

I saw a tweet from my alma mater today, and I was very proud. Rewind several months to a conversation I had with a member of the College’s administration, who has become a good friend. In fact, he’s the only person I want to meet with when it comes to donations/development, even though its not his role!

Me: You need to secure a twitter account for Muhlenberg – http://www.twitter.com/muhlenberg
It’s available to secure right now, which you should do… you’ll thank me later.
Check Gettysburg:  http://twitter.com/gettysburg
Get on it!!!

Friend: Thanks.  We are re-designing the web site and looking at lots of social media……Twitter is one we are looking at.  Hard to tell which ones will stick and which will fade, but….

Me: The account is free….at least reserve /muhlenberg so when you do decide it’s worthwhile, you won’t have to get muhlenberg_college or something confusing.

Friend: Yes, we are doing it.  Thanks for the heads up.  Social networking and integrating it into pr and admissions is one of the things in our strategic plan. Your wish is our command!  THANKS.

So now my alma mater is communicating on Twitter to people who may be more receptive to online communications rather than mail. My school may have been a bit old school, but it’s great to see them embrace Twitter… and they really are rocking it now – lots of tweets and conversations.

Moral of the story is if you know someone who is a bit reluctant to embrace something you think they need to embrace… don’t take no for an answer  – especially if they are important to you. My only regret is not reserving the handle myself and offering it to them in exchange for a case of Yuengling and some Sweet & Sweaty wings from O’Malleys.

The first day of the .CM auctions on Namejet closed yesterday, and the auction cleared $500,000. I was not surprised by this number, but I am surprised about how many people seem to be bidding on .CM domain names. My company did not bid on a single .cm domain auction, despite the perceived need to protect a few of my brands.

There is one overarching reason why I did not bid on the auctions. For the past couple of years, Kevin Ham’s company Reinvent Technology has controlled the traffic for .CM domain names via wildcarding after striking a deal with the Cameroonian government. While the domain names were unregistered for the most part, they forwarded to parking pages where visitors could click to other sites, earning money for the company.

With one entity controlling many of the domain names that are now up for auction, it wouldn’t make sense for me to bid on them, as the deck would be stacked against me. If a particular domain name generates revenue from significant traffic, I would imagine Kevin’s company could bid on it up to its value based on a revenue multiple. It wouldn’t really make sense to bid more than the person who has all of the analytics and would presumably be able to monetize it better than almost anyone.

The argument could be made that the traffic is more valuable for lead gen than PPC. However, I am sure Reinvent did what they could to monetize it as best as possible. Additionally, around 20% of the traffic to my brands with the most type in traffic (my blog not included) comes from type-ins. If just a tiny amount of the traffic was lost due to typing in .CM, it’s probably a very small number, and not even worth the annual renewal fee.

They have some of the smartest people working at the company, and I wouldn’t want to bid against them when they know much more than me. It’s sort of like playing poker when your opponent caught a glimpse of your cards.

Mike posted an article about a case that I read yesterday regarding Louis Vuitton being awarded $32 million in damages from two hosting companies that were found guilty of Contributory Trademark Infringement. The companies had apparently been informed that there were counterfeit goods being sold on websites it hosted, but it did nothing:

“In awarding the damages, the jury agreed with Paris-based Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A.’s claims that the defendants knowingly allowed several Web sites they hosted to sell products that infringed Louis Vuitton’s copyrights and trademarks.”

When I first read the Computerworld article, my thought was that there are probably some domain parking companies that are nervous about this. At least two large parking companies have their operations in California, and they would presumably be held to the rulings of the U.S. District Court in the state of California. Further, one could believe that any company doing business with California residents could potentially be held liable for Contributory Trademark Infringement if they are doing anything to help monetize a trademark infringing domain name.

A parking company that provides PPC landing pages for hundreds of thousands of domain names could be in a similar position as the hosting companies in this situation. There’s no way to monitor every single potential trademark violation on all of the domain names it helps monetize. It will be even more important for them to look into every trademark infringement email notification they receive.