The site has been up for a year or so, and the recall movement has been in process, with a vote scheduled for next month.  The people who do not want the recall to happen also have a domain name, but never really built a website.  For some bizarre reason, the people for the recall committee did not renew the domain name associated with the site, and instead let it lapse.  They did build a new site on a new domain (wwwRecallGrace.com), but seemed to abandon the existing site and domain.

 

And of course the opposition, those people who were against the recall, promptly snapped up the abandoned domain and built a new site that promotes the mayor and condemns the recall.  So any visitor to the site that thought they may get a message that the mayor must go, or was just looking for info, will see a completely different message. The team for the recall act like it does not matter, but it does.  They lost a piece of real estate and intellectual property, and even mind share, they spent a year cultivating.  That makes no sense at all. 

 

A domain name says something, and "Stand Up Elyria" is a powerful and I suppose positive sounding message, and people knew where it was.  Now they have "Recall Grace", which just seems negative and mean.  They say they were intending to do this all along, but I would be surprised if any major organization did this, it places your message and reputation out there in the wild for anybody to hijack.  In addition to the lost message, an organization also loses the mind share, search engine ranking, and links to them.  I read years ago about a local church that decided they did not need the domain name they had and let it lapse; the next day a pornographic site occupied that space.  It makes no sense to let it lapse.

 

What Stand Up Elyria should have done is retain the domain name, and redirected it to the new site. 

 

And hopefully that little reminder is helpful to all of us.