Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/05/02/jodee_onetel_richs_spruiks_ceo_sites_for_email_like_a_boss/

Jodee 'One.Tel' Rich spruiks .CEO sites for email LIKE A BOSS

Wolfram beats hoarder with 100+ .CEO domains featuring names of famous leaders

By Simon Sharwood

Posted in Legal, 2nd May 2014 01:48 GMT

Jodee Rich, a technology entrepreneur best known for his part in the spectacular collapse of Australian mobile telco One.Tel, has thrust himself into inboxes around the world with an offer to register for the .CEO global top-level domain (GTLD).

Rich is now the CEO of Peoplebrowsr, a social media analysis outfit chiefly notable for a 2012 legal stoush with Twitter. Peoplebrowsr also operates Kred, an “influence measurement” tool that competes with the similarly-alphanetically-awkward Klout.

Another Peoplebrowsr asset is the .CEO global top level domain, applied for and awarded last year and open for business since late March.

A missive sent to Kred signatories today leads would-be .CEO buyers to pages like this extolling the domain's virtues as a place “... for dotDoers, dotGrowers, dotInnovators, dotMovers and dotShakers only.”

It gets worse: Rich also promises acquiring a .CEO address means “It’s Email. Like a Boss.” The spruiking site also says “It’s never lonely at the top when you’re on dotCEO”.

The pitch doesn't seem to be going down very well: just 3546 .CEO domains have been sold. With the GTLD application fee set at $US185,000, Rich will struggle to win return on investment even if all 3456 stick around for many years at the current $99 annual fee.

A payday looks even less likely when one considers that a chap called Andrew Davis has reportedly hoovered up 100 or more .CEO domains including those for Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Oprah Winfrey.

Davis says he is “... building a huge Directory, containing the names and details of relevant CEOs, Business Owners and Leaders, from all around the world.”

But at least one of the CEOs whose names he has registered is pushing back: Domain Name Wire reports that Wolfram LLC, the company behind Stephen Wolfram's eponymous next-generation search engine, successfully wrested Wolfram.CEO from Davis' clutches after using ICANN's Uniform Rapid Suspension process. ®