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This
afternoon I spent some time
chatting with Boston Herald
reporter Brendan Lynch who is
writing a story about the "tebowing"
craze that is sweeping the globe. In
case you haven't heard tebowing is
striking a prayerful pose while down on
one knee, a la Denver Broncos |
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quarterback Tim Tebow who has
become an NFL sensation after
leading the team to a series of
miraculous come from behind wins over
the past eight weeks. The Broncos have
won 7 of the 8 games the former University
of Florida star and Heisman
Trophy winner has started. In the
five games before Tebow entered the line
up they were a dismal 1-4.
Lynch's
story will center on Tebowing.com,
a new site that a fan put online after
registering the domain name less than
60 days ago. The site's owner told
Lynch that Tebowing.com has had millions
of page views in the past month as the
Tebow story captured people's
imagination around the world. The site
features hundreds of photos of people
tebowing, often in front of famous
landmarks like the Eiffel Tower,
or in odd locations like the ocean floor
where a scuba diver is shown striking
the pose. |
Scuba
diver "tebowing" in
photo submitted to Tebowing.com. |
Lynch
wanted to talk to me about the possible value
of the Tebowing.com domain name now that
this craze had gone viral. That is almost
impossible to determine without knowing exactly
how much traffic is coming through the site and
how much revenue it is now generating (also as a
developed site with interesting content, any
price paid now would likely be for more than the
domain name alone). At the moment, not much is
being done to monetize that traffic. There is
just an ad for Tebowing T-Shirts with proceeds
to benefit Denver area charities and a couple of
PPC banners pulled from an ad network.
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Tim
Tebow on the cover of ESPN Magazine |
It
doesn't appear that many advertisers are
bidding on the term in search engines
yet either. Even though more than 39
million pages come up at Google when
you type in tebowing, there is only one
ad for what appears to be a cheap
knock-off T-shirt being sold on Ebay for
$10.95. Still, if Tebow and tebowing
mania continues to grow, the owner is
likely to find himself with many more
monetization options, perhaps including
direct advertising from companies
selling Tebow jerseys, Christian books,
etc. Some
may wonder if there is any trademark
infringement involved in Tebow's name
being part of the domain name, but
Tebowing.com is mostly just showing
pictures of people posing in a way that
mimics their hero, so on the surface the
site would |
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appear to be on
safe
ground, with one possible exception.
There are photos of Tebow himself in the
site's header and if those are not
licensed or approved for use, they could
cause some problems for the owner.
Odds are he is following the rulebook in
that area as well though. |
In
any case, lots of other speculators have
also jumped on the bandwagon. Within 2-3
days of when Tebowing.com was registered October
25th, the term "tebowing" was taken in
every other well-known extension,
including many representing countries
outside the U.S., including .co.uk,
.in, .ws and many others. As of this
writing the only notable extension I saw still
available was the European Union's .eu.
Odds are, most of those alternatives will be
wasted money, but it just shows how fast a new
term can take off when the media gets on
board. As
for the .com, it definitely has significant
value beyond reg fee now, so the owner came up
with a winner with that choice.
Just how valuable his asset is, or will be in
the future, remains to be seen. That will be
influenced by how long Tim Tebow continues to
reign as the Mile High Messiah, however
as a Heisman Trophy winner and a widely admired
role model, Tebow will continue to have a huge
fan base for years to come, so tebowing may
well have a long shelf regardless of how the
rest of his pro career goes.
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