Big Media Still Doesn’t ‘Get It’: Comcast Announces Launch of New Streaming Service, Doesn’t Own Matching Domain Yet

It happens over and over again: big media company announces launch of new service with much gusto and fanfare. Once the wheels have been already set in motion, someone at the company has a moment of epiphany: “Hang on, we don’t quite own the matching domain yet!”.

As Eliot Silver notes, Comcast announced the launch of a new streaming service, Streampix, to directly compete with the 800lb Gorilla in the ring, Netflix. Netflix, I don’t think it needs to be said, is the undisputed leader in the video streaming space with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and millions of paying subscribers (current market cap: $6.51B). If Comcast is to have any chance of toppling it from the Numero Uno spot, it’ll have to bring out the big guns and fire them hard.

But before Comcast could even step into the ring, it bungled up one of the most fundamental rules of marketing: own the .com before you announce your product.

Turns out that Streampix.com is actually owned by a company called Norpix, which sells a digital video recording software under the Streampix brandname. The domain itself has been registered up to 2019, and Norpix is a legitimate entity with a strong foothold in the digital video recording space. There is little chance that the company will let go of the Streampix brand name without much haggling.

What this is symptomatic of is a deeper malaise plaguing major companies today: they are still stuck in the 1990s, non-web era. Rather than basing their marketing strategies on the internet, and expanding thereon, they start off from traditional avenues and think of the internet only as an addendum or an afterthought.

This is perhaps forgivable if an oil and natural gas company announces a new marketing campaign without owning the matching .com of their product, but absolutely inexcusable if a major media company does it, especially when the product will primarily be consumed on the internet. Streaming videos, after all, will be done via the internet; it makes all the more sense to ensure that you own the relevant domain name before you announce your Big-Ambitious-World-Domination plans.

The most we, as domainers, can do is sigh and shake our heads. Big media still doesn’t quite ‘get it’. From letting domains expire to launching new products without owning the .com, most companies are still stuck in a time warp.

On the bright side, a mistake like this on a big company’s part can land a domainer a pretty good windfall!