WoW.com social network coming from AOL?
Until this morning, I didn’t realize AOL was sitting on the three letter domain wow.com.
Techcrunch is reporting a source has informed them that AOL plans to use this domain for a World of Warcraft social network:
Apart from selling the domain to Blizzard (which owns World of Warcraft), turning it into a World of Warcraft related site is the most obvious way to leverage the random traffic it must receive from people looking for the game.
No more details or if this source info is correct, but it’s a lot better than leaving a good three letter domain relatively unused.
Enough social networking?
I’m starting to wonder at what point we become social network bankrupt? Isn’t the game itself social enough? As the most popular MMORPG out there, Blizzard has capitalized on this by holding a conference called Blizzcon, but it covers all their games, not just WoW.
What do you think, would you like to see more social networks, or have you seen enough and it’s time for a new fad?
AOL tainted?
Maybe squatting on the domain is a better description since AOL has owned wow.com since 1998. I wonder what Blizzard is going to think about this and also why they didn’t try to get ICANN to rollover the unused domain to them? Then again, maybe they don’t have wow trademarked, so they would have no fight.
For this writer anyway speaking of the social network if it has AOL behind it I’m immediately less interested. They’ve done too many things I haven’t liked over the years that have left a bad impression for their company, products and services. I’ll check out the network when it launches, but be less inclined to visit just because AOL is involved. What about you?
October 2nd, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | October 2, 2007 at 07:07 | individual comment-link
My company used the ICANN arbitration recently to get back a domain we owned a few years ago but had let go. We did not have our company name trademarked (that I do remember) and we obtained the domain. We have been in business with the name since 1933 and are well known in our business so there had to be more of a reason for Blizzard to not use that arbitration besides trademark. (Perhaps any press is press?) Either way the last thing the Internet needs is *another* social networking site. May this fad rest in peace. AOL should stick to things they do best: AOL DSL and their debian mirror. (although I’m fairly certain AOL DSL is defunct now which should tell them something.)