Twitter sues twiter.com

Twitter, the social media and microblog behemoth, has decided to file a domain dispute over twiter.com. The dispute is filed by Twitter with World International Property organization (WIPO)

The domain name for Twiter, notice the missing ‘t’, was filed in 2004 long before the micro blog Twitter came into existence. Since then Twiter hasn’t done much. After Twitter came into picture, twiter chose to put the domain to good use. It chose to cash in on a possible typo in typing out twitter. Once the user commits the mistake, the site will lead you to a survey filling exercise in exchange for a free gift.

Twiter went on with this rather innocuously until it reached 125,000 hits in the month of August 2010. After this success, Twiter decided to redirect the url to few other deal sites or other sites which are in the business of redirecting and making use of that traffic.

SpeakAsia should have been a good fit for twiter.com. But it’s a different and surprising alliance. When you type twiter.com from India, it redirects to India’s deal site SnapDeal.com.

Here’s the route on which it goes :

Twiter.com –> tquizprizes.com –> socialquizportal.com –> goat.com –> snapdeal.com

My guess is Snapdeal has paid some money to get this traffic. Snapdeal is also the fastest growing daily deal site in India. We just might have found one reason why snapdeal is gaining a lot of traction.

Google has dealt with its fair share of domain squatters. Twitter just got a taste of its own. Though in case of Twiter, it technically isn’t a squatter because the domain was registered long before anyone knew about Twitter. Of course, the use to which it was put to after Twitter shot to limelight is questionable. Can Twitter bulldoze its way through twiter.com? Or should Twitter pay some money to get that domain and shut it down?

Do you think twiter.com should be compensated?

Via TNW, Fusible

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