Thought Mike Berkens was toying with them… — These guys
Podcast tells the story of guys who tried to buy a domain name from Michael Berkens.
I just listened to a very interesting podcast called Reply All. This particular episode talks regarding two guy’s effort to buy a domain name from Michael Berkens.
The guests run a site at Longform.org and wanted to buy Longform.com. But Berkens owned it. Following many failed attempts to buy the domain, they tried one last time. The last time, they let is slip that they owned the matching .org.
Shortly thereafter, they received a message from someone trying to buy their own domain, Longform.org. Then they received a message from Berkens telling them that he’d just received an offer on the .com, and asking them if they want to bid.
The Longform.org guys thought they were getting scammed by Berkens. They thought he was just toying with them to get them to buy the domain, making them worried that someone else was going to buy the domain name. They thought he was probably in cahoots with whomever had emailed them regarding buying the .org.
When they backed out of bidding on the domain, they never saw the domain transfer. They concluded that, indeed, Berkens was playing them.
They thought this was the case when they scheduled to go to the studio to be guests on Reply All earlier last year. But just ahead of arriving, they looked up the whois and saw that the domain had transferred.
Berkens wasn’t playing them. There was another party bidding on the domain, and they bought it. It also happened to be a Mark Monitor client, which means it’s likely a big firm.
(I got a big kick out of the guests talking regarding Berkens’ prolific blogging.)
Reply All then talked to Dave Higgins over at Afternic, ahead of reaching Berkens himself.
It’s a really interesting and well done show, and worth spending 20 minutes to listen.
It appears the Longform.org guys are sticking with their name. They just applied for a trademark for “Longform”.
Derek JeterMichael Berkens will be at NamesCon next week, and I look forward to seeing him there.
