Rightside manages 33 (and is in the running to manage several additional) new gTLD extensions, and the company operates popular domain registrars, Enom and Name.com. Clearly, it is in the company’s best (financial) interest to sell domain names in the new extensions, particularly the extensions the company manages and will manage.
On October 2nd and 3rd, Rightside will be holding an internal hackathon to come up with ideas that will help the company promote the new gTLDs and encourage usage of them by the general public. I saw a tweet mentioning the Rightside hackathon, and I asked a company representative for additional details about the hackathon.
According to Mark Gross, Director of Corporate Communications for Rightside, here’s how the hackathon will work:
“We’re getting all our teams together on Oct 2 and 3 to work on tools and other projects designed to enable, encourage, and promote the use of our new TLDs. Toward the end of the day on the 3rd, we’ll do in-person presentations, but the teams will be judged based on the short videos they submit that describe their hacks.
We’ll choose four finalists and a ‘people’s choice’ team, the latter based on a popular vote. Those five teams will present again, this time to the entire company, broadcast live to the entire company, and the winners will be crowned at the conclusion.”
The company has been accepting idea submissions from employees via its internal intranet, and I was told several ideas have already been submitted. Name.com and Enom have tweeted about the hackathon, so it seems that they are actively preparing their hackathon submissions.
I asked Mark if he could provide some examples of hacks that have already been discussed, and he was able to share a couple, which I have shared below.
- Simple user flow for purchase of a domain pre-configured to redirect web requests to the user’s FaceBook Page, LinkedIn Profile, Tumblr page, Pinterest page, etc.
- Build a “gift-a-domain” promotion in time for Christmas. Not a gift card, but a way to send someone a personalized, registered domain. .DENTIST hits GA on Christmas eve – the perfect last-minute gift for the dentist in your life.
Although Rightside hasn’t requested that customers and domain investors submit their ideas, I would assume you are welcome to do so (likely without compensation, so beware). In fact, Enom posted a tweet asking interested followers to submit their ideas for the hackathon.
Once the Rightside hackathon has been held, I will share an update with the winning ideas.
I think Rightside should acquire the promotion services of Pinkard Alan Brand, when you look at how much mileage he got out of .mobi, it’s quite an achievement.
I wonder why ICANN doesn’t do that.
We have done several hackathons as a part of Demand Media, but this is our first since spinning off to become Rightside in August. We have a pretty innovative culture anyway, but every once in a while it is nice to focus the entire company (the event spans all four of our major offices, each of which is in a different timezone – Kirkland, Denver, Austin, and Dublin) on innovation for a couple of days. This one is also a little different in that we have a pretty specific theme. We want these projects to quickly lead to value for our customers (whether that’s in the form of new products, features, better customer service, more focused outreach, or whatever).
P.S. To be quantitative about “several ideas have already been submitted”: as of right now our internal hackathon site has 47 ideas listed. No, wait, just refreshed: 48.