From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Jun 15 2010 - 12:44:06 EDT
Chasing FanFeeder: Squatters, Eritrea and the missing e
June 15, 2010 | Ty Ahmad-TaylorAdd a Comment Share
4(Editor’s note: Ty Ahmad-Taylor is CEO and founder of FanFeedr, a
real-time personalized sports aggregator. He submitted this story to
VentureBeat.)
I studied Latin for five years in high school. In addition to breeding a
fascination with linguistic camera obscuras, it forced me to want to spell
words properly – which I can do with varying degrees of success.
So when I started my own company, and found out that FanFeeder.com was
taken, I grudgingly went with FanFeedr.com, missing the absent “e” in a way
that was disproportionate to its impact.
This is the story of how I tried to regain that missing “e” from both the
original domain holder, and perhaps more importantly, from the country of
Eritrea, formed 17 years ago from the coast of Ethiopia. (You can get the
historical background of the country here.)
The domain holder of FanFeeder.com took my original call about the domain,
and has since stopped taking my calls or emails. Presumably, he is a lost
cause.
But FanFeed.er is technically available, allowing me to just move on without
backroom negotiations with an unwitting partner. So this past winter, I
began the process of learning how to buy an Eritrean domain.
NameCheap is my domain acquisitor of choice, and they didn’t allow for .er
domains. GoDaddy, which I try to avoid because of issues like this, doesn’t
sell them either. Conducting a search for “buying Eritrean domains” yields a
treasure trove of information without the treasure.
So I put my contacts to work. I have a good friend who spent several years
in Israel at the Bahai’ center there, and I knew that she had traveled some
to East Africa. Bahai’s, in general, have the most extensive multi-national
network of any religious group I know. My request: “Do you know anyone
affiliated with the Eritrean government” yielded this answer: “Yes, I do.”
Of course she did.
That contact actually lives in Atlanta, and he simply knows people in the
government, which is single-party, with no elections, at the moment. He
asked his brother, who is building a WiMax network in Botswana (never mind
that New York has no such thing), who directed me to the following web page,
which doesn’t show up when conducting my failed search above.
The intrigue continued.
The page lists a contact in the Eritrean telecom ministry as well as a
technical contact in California. Before I began inquiries, though, I first
had to get back in touch with my Atlanta contact, as the name of the
administrative contact was gender-indeterminate.
“Can you tell if ‘Teclemariam Ghebreyonas’ is a man or a woman?,” I wrote.
“I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot, and the ‘mariam’ suffix is
leading me to think it is a woman, but what I don’t know about Eritrean name
origins would fill volumes.”
He had a good chuckle at my expense and informed me that Teclemariam is, in
fact, a dude.
Excellent, I thought. I simply need to send an email and FanFeed.er will be
mine.
Not quite.
Mr. Ghebreyonas’s email wasn’t functional. (And, yes, I know that he works
at the telecom ministry.) So I emailed the technical contact in San
Francisco, who apparently runs a wine distributor during his daytime hours.
No response.
I called him three times in February, hoping to catch him in between
Cakebread shipments. Again, no reply.
Eventually, I had to call Eritrea. No big deal, even if it is eight hours
ahead of the US East Coast. The woman who answered was presumably speaking
Semitic, the language spoken by most of the country. I asked her to speak to
an English speaker, my Semitic being non-existent.
Three phone clicks later, I spoke to a man with a deep baritone and
pitch-perfect English. I described my situation. Mid-sentence, he cut me off
and told me to call him back in 15 minutes, as he had to “prepare the phone
number for Asalam, who controls such things.”
When I rang the Ministry again, the same Semitic-speaking woman answered in
pitch-perfect English (yes, I scratched my head as well), and told me that
she had Asalam’s number.
“How did you know to speak to me in English?”
“You are the American.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because they told you to call back, and you did.”
Either they don’t get a lot of calls at that ministry or they have very good
international CallerID.
There was, of course, one caveat: Asalam is only at the ministry in the
mornings. Which meant waking up at 2.30am ET to get him at his desk.
Somewhat predictably, I didn’t get him until the third try.
On this last attempt, he picked up the phone, and explained that he needed
to leave shortly for his afternoon job at the postal ministry. No problem.
I gave him my story, and he listened patiently. He then informed me that
there were two constraints to buying .er domains:
1. The buyer has to be an Eritrean national
2. The only domains available are .com.er or .org.er, neither of which
works (though FanFeed.org.er is fun to say.)
My dreams of running a side business in .er domains was shattered, as was my
three month quest to actually acquire the domain for FanFeedr.
But I know at lot more about Eritrea and I made a couple of new
acquaintances.
The FanFeeder guy still hasn’t responded.
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