This article is more than 1 year old

Mondus goes mental

We're not mental and we're still dropping the dotcom

Feedback Mondus.com has fired off an unfinished press release saying that it is to drop the ".com" from its name because its doesn't like being lumbered with the Internet image and wants to be a "successful, stand-alone business".

Now, we think that Mondus - which is set up for small businesses to tender their work and receive quotes from competing suppliers - is a great idea, a great site and a smashing business plan (takes a cut on transactions). But. And this is a big "but". What the bloody hell does it think it is playing at with this "dropping the dotcom" gibberish?

We can only presume that business hasn't been as good as it expected because this is one of the lamest examples of free PR we have ever comes across - and believe us, there have been a few. The fact is that is Mondus.com is only, solely, entirely an Internet company. So why on earth does it think making a fuss about the one thing that makes its business plan work (that's the Internet) it an appropriate way of behaving?

We called up Mondus' PR company to make sure this wasn't a wind-up. It wasn't. Of course, the fact that it had accidentally sent an unfinished release didn't help (Seat is apparently investing $150 in the company. That's a lorra money, $150 - of course the true figure of $150 million is a little more noteworthy).

This is what the company's CEO had to say: "This is very much more than simply a new corporate colour or re-branding exercise. The dot com world initially started off as a fascination for the public and media with the focus being very much on the investment and growth possibilities for these companies. There's now a lot of cynicism attached and we are very keen to disassociate ourselves from this. Mondus has a very strong business already, with more than 150,000 businesses..." blah blah blah.

What a load of nonsense. Mondus: we like you, but for God's sake don't do things like this, you're only embarrassing yourself. ®

Update: Of course, Mondus weren't overly happy with this story (although secretly entertained - but that's off the record so you didn't hear it from me, right?). It wanted to explain why it was dropping the ".com" away from all the PR guff. It made a fair case and for some reason (probably the sun, hangover and bank holiday weekend) we said we'd put an update on the story (this is it, by the way).

So why? Because it has a load of sites in Europe but with its name being sold as Mondus.com, people are going to the .com site rather than "co.uk", ".fr" etc etc. There you go. We look forward to "keeping you on your toes" in the future Mondus :-).

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