02/17/2010 22:37

1839 redidt.com: For Posterity

Way back in ancient times (October, 2006), shortly after my boss had introduced me to reddit, I registered the domain redidt.com. I'm no typosquatter, though if I'd had the foresight to register yuotube.com or dacebook.com, that might be a different story and I'd probably be posting this from the lanai of my secluded beach house somewhere on the north shore of Oahu. I simply made the redidt typo one day, and wondered how many others were doing the same. So I registered the domain for the hell of it, and put up a little you-goofed page, reminiscent of some Slashdot typo domain of years past. Visitors were informed, without any glitz, that "You probably made a typo. That's okay, it happens to the best of us. :)" It wasn't too long before someone noticed, but reddit wasn't exactly a booming intertube metropolis at that point, so no one even bothered to comment. redidt.com has had exactly three incarnations over the years: 10/30/2006, the original 10/07/2007, after a post on Digg 11/15/2008, can't recall why, though it must have come up again somewhere The fact that the cycle seems to repeat on an almost annual basis is not lost on me, though I have no explanation. A couple of years ago, reddit's (now-retired) co-founder Alexis Ohanion messaged me out of nowhere, offering a bunch of reddit t-shirts in exchange for the domain. It was the greatest orangered of all time, and we talked back and forth a bit, but for some reason it fell through. This morning, I received another unexpected orangered from kn0thing. This time, Nasty Conde's counsel is in on the discussions, so I'm quite sure I'll be getting a box of reddit t-shirts soon enough... And that I will not own redidt.com much longer.