What do you think about GoDaddy.com?
Me…well admittedly my opinion about GoDaddy has been built solely on their 14 rounds of approval needing, over-hyped, wardrobe malfuncting, buxom chicked Superbowl commercials. It’s not that I am a prude and find boobs offensive, I just never got past the seemingly shady publicity and questioning what the heck the boobs had to do with buying domain names. I buy domain names all the time – have I ever used GoDaddy? 
Nope. Would I ever use them? Titty commercials haven’t exactly inspired me to go the extra step to check out their services. What corporation wants to say that their approved domain name vendor is GoDaddy? In all honesty I haven’t had any reason to given them a real chance…and probably never would of…until….
Today I was on the 26 minute flight from West Palm Beach to Tampa. I do this same trip several times a month for business and always fly Southwest for the ease and flexibility. On these jaunts I have 26 minutes to read the airline’s Spirit Magazine, and today the brand new May issue was nestled in my seat pocket. Low and behold – in this General Interest Airline Magazine, there was a feature story called, “Sounding Boards – Blogs offer employees a forum to air their grievances.” by Chris Tucker. The article featured the usual companies – Google, Sun, Microsoft and Apple – and their attitudes/actions regarding employee blogs as well as the requisite Shel Israel references. But there was also an unexpected snippet about GoDaddy:
“GoDaddy’s founder and CEO, Bob Parsons, blogs about the company’s strengths, but he also chronicles its problems. Parsons has discussed ‘major decision’ errors made at GoDaddy on his blog; in another entry, he chronicled a ‘mini-disaster’ that struck the company when its servers went down. It’s a PR person’s nightmare, the kind of thing safely retired CEOs usually reserve for their memoirs.
“Every business has its problems. No exception to that,” Parsons explains. “Part of how we succeed isn’t just how we deal with the good times, but how we deal with the problems. This blog is a window into the company so that people can see how we run it, the challenges I face, and how we deal with them. For it to have any substance at all, you’ve got to be honest.”
Right there – in the 20 seconds that it took me to read these 2 paragraphs in a 3 page article in Spirit Magazine about blogging – my entire opinion of GoDaddy changed. Right or Wrong – THAT’S the power of a blog. You can see GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons blog here. Kinda makes you wonder what they would be like to work for too. Search their jobs here.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I am in the process of moving my recruitinganimal.com domain to GoDaddy because it is one of the companies that Typepad recommends for Domain Mapping.
My current provider doesn’t allow you to access the C-Name (which is essential for domain mapping) unless you also let them host your site.
pairNIC was also recommended but the prices seem to be much steeper.
The commercials were moderately amusing the first year, the second not so much. In my book it is one thing to be offensive, but to be offensive AND boring is a real crime.
Bob Parsons’ blog is one of the greats in my book. He really lets it all hang out. He had a great series on how he lost nearly all the money he made when he sold his first business in the dot-com crash, and then nearly shut down Go Daddy right before it turned the corner. Really interesting stuff.
Interesting timing. I just saw this news:
Go Daddy Group files for $200 mln IPO
Fri May 12, 6:18 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Go Daddy Group Inc., which provides a domain name registration at its http://www.GoDaddy.com Web site, said it is seeking an initial public offering of as much as $200 million in Class A common stock.
Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS Investment Bank, Cowen and Company, Piper Jaffray and JMP Securities were hired to underwrite the IPO, according to an amended offering document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
It is seeking a Nasdaq listing under the symbol “DADY.”
That really does show the power of a blog and how it can really communicate the heart and soul of a business.
To your original point though, it is still a risky strategy to use the girly stuff, for it alienates quite a large segment of the population.
I suppose if their demographics show that it’s a good move, that’s one thing. Yet, it seems the statistics are showing that a more mature demographic is growing online.
We’ll see how that all plays out.
{ 1 trackback }