Case Studies

Vox Populi Registry, the company bringing dotSucks domain names to the Internet, has announced that its technology platform services provider, Neustar, Inc. (NYSE:NSR), has been given the Registry’s first-ever “Best Business Partner” award. Created last December, Vox Populi Registry, located in the Cayman Islands, initially partnered with Australia-based ARI Services as its back-end technology provider. Neustar, based in Sterling, Virgina acquired that company last Summer. The award – “Recognizing exemplary technical support in year one of the domain name registry” — was presented to Adrian Kinderis, former CEO of Bombora Technologies (ARI’s parent company) and now VP, Corporate Development at Neustar, at the domain name conference, NamesCon, this week in Las Vegas. “Our success in this first year of operation is a product of our business plan, marketing, sales channel and rock-solid technical support for our names,” said John Berard, Vox Populi Registry’s CEO. “Neustar is making sure of it. They’ve earned this award.” The award acknowledges that Neustar was essential to Vox Populi Registry’s success as its “impeccable” technical platform allowed Vox Populi Registry to devote itself full-time to market awareness and sales. Vox Populi Registy is just one of hundreds of companies bringing new Internet domain names online. The program, managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN, was designed to help people better portray their digital identity. According to Berard, dotSucks names offer an unprecedented opportunity for people with a point-of-view not just to speak, but be more likely heard. “As a provocative service, with deep roots in free speech and fast-growing branches of comment and criticism, it was imperative to rally a set of business partners who could support us in our mission,” Berard said. “First as ARI and then as Neustar, they did the job.”

As part of our on-going series of conversations with .sucks registrants, I spoke recently with Aaron Osher, who, by day, is in charge of experimental marketing for Windrush (www.windrush.org) in upstate New York. But by night (and day, too) is the energy behind www.PDF.sucks, an innovative approach to promoting Windrush’s new Software as a Service platform which allows even doctors, lawyers and bankers to create technically adept, interactive, data-driven stories and reports. Think of it, he says, as the “anti-PDF.” The company is about two years old and hopes to remake the cumbersome, human resource heavy and technically demanding methods of visualizing data for business insight used today. As Osher puts it, “We want to replace PDFs and the army of people that surrounds them.” The goal, he says, it to “tell meaningful stories with data” by “visualizing and contextualizing” the information. The point is well-made on the company’s website: “We help you and your organization share data through easy-to-build, engaging and interactive online documents, without sacrificing quality.“ So, I get the PDF, but why .sucks? “We wanted to be a little edgier,” Osher said. “Tasked to test experimental marketing and in line with our anti-PDF stance, we looked to the new gTLDs for the right voice and hit upon .sucks.” he said. Marketing the site, which relies on a herd of hippos (yes, hippos) to do the heavy lifting, is being done primarily through the social media channels Windrush has been building. At PDF.sucks, a user can upload a PDF and the hippos will transform it using the Windrush platform. Osher thinks when people see the two formats side-by-side, the hippos will dance victorious. We should be able to feel that even here! If it is true that most people learn by seeing in a context they recognize, Osher and his colleagues have a real shot at redesigning the face of business and financial reports. They have our attention and hope for their every success.

From time to time we visit with .sucks registrants to get a sense of their mission and progress. It is a good rule of thumb that the best way to stimulate new ideas is to acknowledge one when you see it. With that in mind, we offer a field report on the Chicago, Illinois team behind www.thismeeting.sucks. The idea was the brainchild of Abe Reese, president and founder of Align Us (www.align.us), a software development company with a focus on efficiency. Reese is a die-hard coder-entrepreneur-ninja with a passion for organizational health. His firm has won the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies Award four years in the row, proving a capability to turn ideas into reality while maintaining a fun, focused, work environment. The idea of “This Meeting Sucks!” took hold before the launch of Vox Populi Registry, but the fit was perfect. The development of a mobile app to extend the reach of the service was deemed essential in our mobile app driven world. But whether on a laptop or smartphone, the opportunity to be heard amidst the drone of a bad meeting is the first step to stamping them out. As a young organization, Align Us has always aimed to design fun and engaging web tools, staying current with the Internet. This Meeting Sucks! simply uses that same edgy appeal but with a fun, creative twist. Ultimately, the goal is to raise the quality of meetings, making them more productive and successful. As an early adopter of the .sucks platform, we wish them every success.