Recent Posts
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Company to offer .sucks domains at .com prices
A new company says it is going to sell .sucks domain names, which usually retail for around $250, for as little as $12 a year.
This.sucks Inc, which says it is not affiliated with the registry, is even planning to give away 10,000 names for free.
That’s a hell of a cost to cover — the .sucks registry fee is $199 for most names or $1,999 for names, including brands, that have been marked as premium.
A 10,000-name giveaway would cost close to $2 million per year, in other words.
But This.sucks isn’t a registrar. Instead, it wants to tie its customers in to its forum and blogging platform, which will be monetized in some way.
Spokesperson Phil Armstrong told us “our plan is to create new revenue streams from different sources, including possibly advertising.” He said:
Our goal is to build a business around giving consumers affordable and easy access to these expressive web addresses, and we’ll work with different registrars to get the best price. We think we can create a large, sustainable community that over time will generate income well above the initial costs of the registrations.
There are good reasons to believe that the company is in fact the “Consumer Advocate Subsidy” provider that .sucks registry Vox Populi promised would be launching in September.
Vox Pop said in March that the subsidizing entity — which would be an unaffiliated company — would offer .sucks domains with attached forum sites for around $10 a year.
The proposed name of the service was “Everything.sucks” — a domain now owned by This.sucks Inc that redirects to this.sucks.
But Vox Pop CEO John Berard said that This.sucks was “just another registrant” and that it was “not a registry service”.
Armstrong said: “We are not related to anything Vox Populi is doing. Not sure what they are up to, but hopefully they’ll be excited about what we are doing.”
The company’s mailing address appears to be a UPS store at a small strip mall in New York state.
The this.sucks service is currently in invitation-only beta testing “for individuals with a passion”.
There’s a sister site with a virtually identical design and mission statement at this.rocks.
In a fact sheet, This.sucks says:
At both This.Rocks and This.Sucks consumers will be able to pick the name of companies, products, people and causes they want to be the focus of the commentary and conversation. With the web address of their choosing, they will be able to moderate a blog or forum to talk about the issues, initiatives and interests that stir their passions.
The goal is to encourage individual consumers to give voice to their points-of-view and make it easy for like‐minded people to join the conversation, much like Reddit for general topics, Slash/Dot for technology, CafePharma in the ethical drug industry, and Glassdoor for job seekers and employers.
This.sucks is hosted on the exact same IP address as Register.sucks (registered to Vox Populi), according to DomainTools.com, along with:
1. batman.sucks
2. boston.sucks
3. buy.sucks
4. cilantro.sucks
5. everything.sucks
6. get.sucks
7. getyour.sucks
8. newyork.sucks
9. register.sucks
10. search.sucks
11. superman.sucks
12. that.rocks
13. that.sucks
14. this.rocks
15. this.sucks
16. traffic.sucks
17. what.sucks
Just another registrant? LOL
George, I noticed this independently shortly after posting the above story and am currently awaiting comment from the respective companies.
Both Registry.sucks and This.sucks also use the same email provider, too (Outlook.com, i.e. Microsoft Office hosted-email). The MX records for registry.sucks:
registry.sucks. 3600 IN MX 0 registry-sucks.mail.protection.outlook.com.
and for this.sucks, the MX records are:
this.sucks. 3600 IN MX 0 this-sucks.mail.protection.outlook.com.
“We are not related to anything Vox Populi is doing. Not sure what they are up to, but hopefully they’ll be excited about what we are doing.”
I mean, c’mon!
The fact that Vox Populi specifically pointed out that it’s not a “registry service” makes it seem like this is all set up to avoid being a registry service.
Does anyone know how to buy a premium domain name from Vox Populi? This.sucks was owned by the registry until just recently. Then the ownership changed to This.sucks while the admin stayed Vox Populi.
Do you have to reach out directly to Vox Populi to buy a domain it has already registered to itself?
I thought it was always their plan to offer these forums. It seems very unlikely they are not connected and the whole thing seems rather suspicious.