Company buys 2Smiles.com domain, but leaves some other obvious ones unregistered.
Earlier this month HP launched Two Smiles, a service that combines custom greeting cards with gift cards.
In advance of the launch HP bought two key domain names for the venture: TwoSmiles.com, the actual web address for the service, and 2Smiles.com, a domain that likely receives visits from visitors who remember the site name as the digit 2 instead of ‘two’ written out.
Based on historical whois records, it appears HP bought TwoSmiles.com from HugeDomains.com. I’m not sure how it tracked down the owner of 2smiles.com because the whois record for that domain had bogus information.
OK, pretty smart to buy 2smiles.com, right?
Yes. Except that 2smiles.com isn’t even set up to forward to TwoSmiles.com.
Also worrisome is that HP didn’t register two other domains that are freely available and could cause confusion. First is TooSmiles.com. I bet some confused visitors show up to this alternative domain. Second is the common www typo, wwwTwoSmiles.com.
Since HP was proactive enough to buy 2Smiles.com, you’d think it would have spent $20 to practice an ounce of prevention with these other domains.
Too Smiley says
Well
Too smiles is now proudly registered
Fittingly the registrar was Internet . bs
Mike Flynn says
This time I think you have it wrong. No-one’s interested in domains like toosmiles.com or wwwtwosmiles.com other than a minority of domainers and not registering these names won’t affect their bottom line in the slightest. Mind you, TwoSmiles.com? I don’t get that either.