

This blogger.com profile is squatting YC founder's names - friism
http://www.blogger.com/profile/08940238965281804762

======
jasonkester
Why would this be an issue?

That is, why is this an issue that's any more important than that Chinese ISP
that keeps sending you emails about the .cn version of your domain name?
Having yourname.blogspot.com wasn't a priority yesterday, so why is it in any
way bad news to find that it's not available today?

There are a million places to register unique names for things. Some (like
.com domains) have value, some (like Geocities profiles, square feet of peat
at the Lagavulin distillery, and .blogspot.com subdomains) do not.

~~~
saalweachter
That would be the other Islay single malt, Laphroaig.

------
michaelpinto
Every time I see Blogger.com I'm always shocked that the site still looks
exactly like it did years ago -- it's had even has less TLC than Yahoo! has
given Flickr. It really speaks volumes about a lack of focus at Google -- in
the time Blogger has atrophied we've seen the likes of Movable Type, Wordpress
and Tumblr arrive on the scene -- so that's at least three generations of blog
that blogger.com is behind at current count. Honestly someone squatting on a
blogger namespace seems almost as silly as setting up a myspace page at this
point...

~~~
timdorr
You imply Flickr's gotten no love from Yahoo!, but that's not true at all.
Just last year they completely revemped one of the most important pages on
their site: The photo page - [http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/06/23/a-new-
photo-experience-...](http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/06/23/a-new-photo-
experience-your-photos-happier/)

And they've made lots of improvements all over the site over the years. Flickr
is one of the remaining products at Yahoo! that's gotten any serious love
lately.

~~~
mncaudill
Indeed. A _lot_ of hard work went into the photo page redesign/rebuild. It's
difficult majorly overhauling a site that serves so many different needs to so
many different kinds of users.

~~~
petervandijck
Too bad for all that work, it just got worse.

The photo view experience on Flickr is slower than any of its competitors.
Slow slow sloooooow.

Plus recently, some of my photos have started to break (as in broken images).

It just feels like it's dead.

Incremental improvements (that aren't always improvements) aren't what Flickr
needs. They need some vision and balls.

~~~
mncaudill
Hi, sorry you've had some difficulties with the site. We've made performance a
big focus on the photo page but there's other sections of the site we're still
trying to make faster. Regarding the broken images, we should be all clear on
that (we recently brought up a new image cluster), so if you're still seeing
that, let me know. I'm caudill @ yahoo-inc.com.

------
sidwyn
Here's the cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FFeY7yQ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FFeY7yQFJBAJ:www.blogger.com/profile/08940238965281804762+http://www.blogger.com/profile/08940238965281804762&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=sg&source=www.google.com.sg)

------
personalcompute
Looks like blogger/google took it down.

~~~
gorloth
Selling accounts like he was seems to be in violation of the blogger terms of
use, relevant section: "7. No Resale of the Service. Unless expressly
authorized in writing by Google, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy,
sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes (a) any portion of
the Service, (b) use of the Service, or (c) access to the Service."

Although I didn't see any way to report the violation.

~~~
dedward
Was he reselling blogger accounts or just domains?

~~~
gorloth
Seems it was selling domains (that's what happens when skimming and not paying
attention to URLs) but blogger was being used as a placeholder and directory
type thing, so that probably falls into the category of "exploit for any
commercial purposes"

------
jstreebin
Anyone contacted him? I've always wondered what user names go for. Anyone
thought of making an exchange for these? Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin URLs?

~~~
troethom
I'm thinking about proposing to buy it for an amount covering his cost except
a dollar. He will still lose money (which should serve as a valuable lesson),
but not as much as if I never buy it - and I really don't need it anyway...

~~~
lachyg
Why would he accept?

~~~
troethom
What would you pick: lose a dollar or lose the cost of a domain? (the cost of
a domain is still more than dollar)

~~~
MikeCapone
What if the satisfaction of not selling it to you is worth more than a dollar
to him/her?

~~~
eLobato
Boy I can't believe you were going to pay 500 bucks for a .com domain with
your name. The guy who's owning mine is asking for not less than $6K so I just
went for the '.me' which is at least as nice looking as '.com' and adds a cool
factor to your emails/business cards. Everyone seems not to believe that your
email can be me@yourname.me but I'd say that it looks catchy aint it?

~~~
pjy04
Yeah, much better uses for $6k....

------
vaksel
squatting on YC companies seems to be popular.

For example a few weeks ago airnb.com sold for 5 grand on GoDaddy.

~~~
avree
I just realized—it's probably a great investment to buy common misspellings of
your own company's name. They can bring more traffic to your site (and keep
you from having to pay name sharks.) If your company decides they don't need
them, you can probably flip them for a big profit.

~~~
asher
When launching Truemors, Guy Kawasaki registered 55 domains to "surround"
truemors.com.

This represented 9% of his total budget.

(From Kawasaki's 2008 book Reality Check).

~~~
rowaway
was it worth it?

------
pjy04
who cares?

