Random Egg - Where ideas hatch! - Ethical domain drop business

Participate

You must register to lay eggs and vote. Registering is easy and requires just a username and a valid email address. Click the "Register" link in the top right of the page. I WILL NEVER SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH ANYONE!

1. Vote: You can vote for any egg you like. You can vote for both incubating and hatched eggs. You can only vote for an egg once.

2. Lay an Egg (optional): If you feel inspired, just click on the "Lay an Egg" button and submit your idea (egg). When you lay an egg it is immediatly viewable on the "Hatched Eggs" page. Any member can vote on any incubating egg. You are limited to one vote per egg.

3. Nurture eggs (Advanced users only): Take an idea and make it a reality! Send me your story and I'll post it on the site!

The Site Structure

1. Fresh Eggs Page: These are eggs submitted my registered members. Once a fresh egg receives 3 votes, it moves to the front page and is called "Hatched."

2. Hatched Eggs Page: These are eggs shown on the front page. They have received 3 or more votes while "incubating" on the Fresh Eggs Page.

What's with the Categories?

Coming up with a category system was one of the most challenging things about making this site! Most systems ended up with categories that were too narrow which meant most ideas could go in multiple categories. The other problem was avoiding being too vague or potentially leaving out a large segment of ideas. Also, since it is impossible to predict what kind of ideas will be submitted, it is very difficult to settle with specific categories.

In the end I realized that all ideas benefit someone, and I think asking the question "Who benefits from the egg?" can be answered by either "The world," "society," "individuals," or "business." I fully realize that the system is not perfect. If you can think of a better way to concisely organize ideas, I would love to hear it!

What are tags?

Tags are words that represent a longer text. For example, if I wrote a 3 paragraph story about the impossibility of time travel, I might use the tags "time, travel, space, science, philosophy." These words would be tagged on to my story so if someone searches for "space", then the story would be in the results. Tags are generally considered more useful and more flexible that categories because a subject rarely fits neatly into just one category.

Please use tags when you submit a story! In the long run, having great tags will make your story much easier to find on the site!

Tags are also a better way to classify your egg than categories are. As you will no doubt notice, putting your egg in a category is much more difficult than finding a few tags for your egg!

OK, this may be a little esoteric for those who are not actively involved in running websites or investing in domain names, but here it is anyway.

Basically, there are webmasters out there who specialize in registering domains that website owners forget, or choose not to, renew. There are even large websites devoted to helping domain catchers with the process, like snapnames.com and pool.com.

In most cases, expired domains are just domains that the owner does not want to renew, but occasionally legitimate business owners are outflanked by these "domain catchers." It works like this: A domain catcher watches a list of domains that are about to expire. They check to see if the domains have any value, and if they are of value the domain catcher waits and registers the domain as soon as it expires. This can be a matter of seconds as several other webmasters may have the same plan.

Now, when the panicked business owner realizes that their website is not available (or forwarded to a pron site), they contact the new owner who informs them (smugly) that they will transfer the domain back to the original owner for a transfer fee of $200 - $2,500. This is perfectly legal, but seems ethically outrageous to me.

So, here is a business idea that turns the whole thing upside down. Step one, go through the exact same process as the domain catcher in evaluating which domain names are valuable. A valuable domain name is likely a domain name that the owner wants to keep. Now, instead of waiting in ambush, make every effort to notify the owner! This will in effect foil the domain catchers and help business owners who may be relying on a flaky host to remind them that their domain will expire.

When an owner gets notice and avoids a potentially costly re-purchase, you ask for a modest donation. If you get nothing, you can feel good about providing a great service. I have a feeling that many successful businesses who avoids the hassle and expense of loosing their domain name will be generous.

In addition, you could offer an annual service that will automatically remind them when the next renewal is coming up.

You could probably sell hosting and/or registrar services, since their current vendors clearly failed!

I am sure there are many other ways to make this even more profitable.