Domain Name Hits and Misses for Companies that Generated Buzz at CES

I’m not going to give companies a hard time in this post for not owning the generic keywords for their products, if those domains have already been registered for years, like the most relevant tablet, touchscreen, smartphone and 4kTV related domains (bye-bye 3DTVs). That’s a post for another day.

However, I was surprised at the number of companies that announced products, but hadn’t registered the corresponding or related .com……even though it was recently available. A few examples:

• Razer Edge was announced as the best of CES award winner by CNET. Unfortunately, you’ll have to go to RazerZone.com to find out about this gaming tablet. RazerEdge.com was registered by an individual on January 3, 2013.

• Lots of press loved Sony’s new smartphones, the Xperia Z and Xperia ZL. You can find out about them at Xperia.com (redirects to Sony’s site), but not XperiaZ.com (registered in July 2012) or XperiaZL.com (registered January 1 this year).

• Fitbit Flex won accolades from CNET as a new personal fitness tracker. The company controls their domain at FitBit.com, but should have also registered FitbitFlex.com, which was available until January 7.

• Have a problem eating too much? They’ve got forks to supposedly fix that now. Vibrating forks vibrate when you eat too fast, and were introduced by a company called HapiLabs. They secured HapiFork.com, but neglected to get VibratingFork.com which was picked up on Friday 1/10, or the plural VibratingForks.com, which is still available for hand reg (along with VibratingUtensil.com and VibratingUtensils.com). As you can see in the video at the bottom of this post, the press loves to refer to them as vibrating forks, not Hapi forks.

At the same time, there were other companies that had the foresight to pick up relevant domains. Kudos to a few examples:

• Chevrolet’s “infotainment system” named My Link was highly regarded. They control the .com and it redirects to Chevrolet’s site.

• People raved over the Yota Phone’s dual display features. Whether you like the name of the product or not……….at least they grabbed the corresponding .com to supplement their main site at YotaDevices.com.

• Tethercell was introduced as “the world’s first app-enabled smart battery”. They snagged the .com on January 7, the day before CES opened, and have it redirected to their Tetherboard.com homepage.