Elliot Silver writes: “”Hi Frank, Did you hear about Yahoo’s new social networking site Kickstart? Check it out when you have a chance…. if you can find it 
”"
***FS*** Find it indeed.. I like Yahoo, but these folks really need some help with naming.. They own Flickr.com but don’t think to acquire the more logical, generic and often mistyped “Flicker.com”. They decide to lay the foundations for their new social networking site on kickstart.yahoo.com as opposed to the more logical Kickstart.com. I think this is part of an internal naming culture that runs to the top at Yahoo. I used to love Launch.com … The brand was seared into my mind.. Then they abandoned the years of branding and switched to music.yahoo.com.. It felt different.. Then they blocked foreign IPs from viewing videos (I’m in the US Centric Cayman Islands), so today I watch music videos on Youtube.com
I believe you can run multiple domain names in tandem with each other, without confusing your audience and for the overall betterment of “the brand”. (ie. Activate launch.yahoo.com, music.yahoo.com, musicvideos.yahoo.com, videos.yahoo.com and point them to the stand-alone “Launch.com .. a Yahoo property” .. That way when Launch.com (it’s own brand and identity) gets big you can spin it off as a seperate publically traded company with its own currency.. extracting value for all Yahoo shareholders (thank-you Barry Diller).
What would be really cool is if Jerry Yang played the role of Willy Wonka… invited a bunch of domainers and spirited outsiders to Yahoo through some “Charlie and the Chocolate factory” like contest.. and then the winner who in Jerry’s judgement had the ‘heart’ and ‘passion’ to coax Yahoo’s naming/marketing culture into previously unexplored directions got to be “Charlie”, who with the help of Brad Garlinghouse would swoop up all salient domain names for Yahoo, adding billions to Yahoo’s market-cap. They could make it a reality show.. It would be bigger than “The Apprentice“.. Note to Jerry: I hereby give you a free irrevocable license to this concept should you choose to explore 
Frank I agree yahoo is so mismanaged its not funny. I mean they can do nothing right. I stopped using launch when they switched just like you did. I would think they a buy but the market believes GOOGLE the smart play crossed $730 and yhoo goes down on a day when an IPO in Hong Kong opens big and they own a big piece.
Yes, but that presupposes that doing what Wall Street wants is actually the right decision for the longer-term prosperity of the company. I would hazard a guess that in the majority of instances, it just isn’t. Sometimes you get the impression the goal is not so much growth as volatility. Lets face it, arbritraging good solid steady growth is a really tough call.
Hi,
“launch.yahoo.com, music.yahoo.com, musicvideos.yahoo.com, videos.yahoo.com”
__
I agree that all these should just resolve to launch.com…and only launch.com should be promoted.
Also,
If Yahoo and other companies keep insisting on using ’sub domains’ in their advertising campaigns…
Would not all these company’s be much better off using ‘full domains’ like musicyahoo.com,yahoomusic.com, yahoovideo.com, videosyahoo.com for advertising and promotionals and redirecting them back to their corresponding ’sub domains’…instead of actually relying on just the ’sub domains’?
I find it completely bizarre & backwards that say Verizon will use: verizon.com/highspeed or verizon.com/broadband in a multi million dollar ad campaigns.
Instead of of using
verizonhighspeed.com or verizonbroadband.com and just redirecting these to their corresponding ’sub domains’.
IMHO…I really do not think a company like Verizon should even ‘redirect’ or use any ’sub domains’. They should just build stand alone mini sites for specific products and services.
Peace!
Dan