Here are some random stories I have found that have to do with domain names but have not or would not be reported in the domain community otherwise. These stories took a good deal of digging to find, but I thought each was interesting in it’s own way and wanted to share.

~ New Orleans first ever "Inspector General" left his post in January 2009 but before doing so, the story claims Bob Cerasoli spent lavishly on computer items and signed off on hiring for a top spot position to somebody that had little experience for a $70K a year job.

The article that captured my eye is the following:

And in an odd note, it says Cerasoli personally purchased the Internet domain name nolaoig.com and has refused to relinquish it, forcing the office to buy the domain name nolaoig.org and reprogram its servers at a cost of $13,125.

I did a whois search and Mr Cerasoli’s name is still listed in Whois.

~ In an interview with paidContent.org at Picnik’s headquarters in Seattle, CEO Jonathan Sposato talked about how they decided to go with the name Picnik.com domain name.

What’s the story with Picnic.com?

It is a group of forest rangers in Oregon or Colorado [Editor’s note: actually, Pennsylvania]. I call them and am really nice, but they’re like, ‘no sorry, the domain is not for sale.’ They have no idea. They run a farm or a park or something.

So the 4 year old picture software site uses a K at the end instead of the C. Well, I clearly have to disagree with Mr Sposato about his "they have no idea" comment, because Mr Sposato made a BIG mistake not paying up to change the mind of the rangers to sell. I know for a fact, Picnik.com is losing traffic to Picnic.com . It is also likely that overtime, Picnik will purchase Picnic as they grow.

~ Baidu Europe purchased the domain name Baidu.me for an undisclosed amount. Baidu Europe owns 15 "other" Baidu domain names with some including: Baidu.tv, Baidu.tel, Baidu.nl and Baidu.eu . Baidu.com is one of the largest search engines.

~ Facebook.com was purchased in 2005 for $200,000 . Not sure if I heard that before..

~ The rebranding from Bezurk.com to WeGo.com

BL: Before wego.com, we understand that it was called Bezurk.com, how did the name change come about?
Ross Veitch: Bezurk as a brand had a number of challenges associated with it, not least of which was that most people had trouble remembering how to spell it. Also, if english is not your first language, as is the case for a large majority of our target audience, then it is difficult to remember at all because the word probably doesn’t mean anything to you.

Because of these difficulties we decided to rebrand prior to kicking off our consumer marking efforts. The calculus was basically that it would cost way more to build up ‘Bezurk’ as a brand than it would to acquire the domain wego.com, rebrand, and market “Wego” as a brand. So we switched from Bezurk.com to Wego.com

No price could be found on the WeGo.com sale.