Not surprisingly, the social networking sites are a favorite target for black hat cybersquatting. Check out this domain typo generator report by Domaintools.com for twitter.com. While some of the domains in the list are no doubt legitimate, the vast majority are clearly cybersquatting sites with parked pages showing advertisements for social networking ads. One cybersquatting domainstand.com LLC holds the following domains:
Twitgter.com Domainstand.com LLC
Twkitter.com Domainstand.com LLC
Tw8itter.com Domainstand.com LLC
Twittefr.com Domainstand.com LLC
Tw3itter.com Domainstand.com LLC
Tw2itter.com Domainstand.com LLC
UDRP search engine Domainfight.net shows domainstand.com to be a habitual cybersquatter of domain names, with transferred domains in each instance.
For more information on domain typosquatting cases or tother UDRP respondents who engage in habitual cybersquatting, check these TraverseLegal.com search results for “habitual cybersquatting.”
The cost is to Twitter's trademarks which are worth - what - tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Trademark owners must preclude third party infringement in order to strengthen, and in some cases preserve, their trademark rights. Allowing cybersquatters to infringe your domains has little to do with advertising revenue. It has everything to do with trademark value and trademark rights.
Posted by: Cybersquatting Twitter | 2011.01.20 at 10:51 AM
So whats the big effin deal? Someone misspells twitter.com and ends up at a site that shows ads for twitter.com and the person eventually gets there at the cost of WHAT to twitter?... 5 cents for that click? Big deal. Twitter eventually gets its visitor. How different is this from Twitter paying for traffic via general advertising? Even the slaves were allowed to eat the crumbs of their owner's dinners. If they're not hijacking and they're not creating a bad taste in visitor's mouths about Twitter - then leave them be.
Posted by: Mike | 2011.01.20 at 10:43 AM