From a Parked Domain to Business Poised for Growth in 45 Days.

Slideshow.com, LLC and Domain Strategies, Inc. announced today the launch of a new internet business – Slideshow.Com – created to be the foundation for a growing business offering a secure platform for posting, sharing and publishing presentations and pictures online.

Gil Benatar, aka “Mr. Slideshow”, contributed the domain name Slideshow.com to the Slideshow.com, LLC joint venture owned by both Gil and Domain Strategies in June 2008. “I was interested in building a great business on the Slideshow.com domain and the approach by Rob Monster and Scott Fasser of Domain Strategies was the perfect fit for my situation.” Explained Mr. Benatar, “The fact that we were able to research, plan, build and launch a relatively complex site within a couple of months was very impressive.”

Domain Strategies is spearheading a partnership model with owners of premium domains to combine the strong branded domain name and industry know-how, with the site development, capital and business relationship expertise of Domain Strategies. Scott Fasser described the process this way, “We combined technology from Identity.net for single sign-on, iPaper for publishing from Scribd.com, open source image management, as well as proprietary content in order to create Slideshow.com.”

The funding for Slideshow.com has come from Seattle-based Monster Venture Partners, led by Rob Monster, the company’s Managing Director.

“Gil has been an ideal business partner for this venture, not only because of his contribution of the premier domain name in the space, but also for his 20 years of knowledge and expertise in the development of presentations and communication tools. The initial site is a foundation for growth into the premier online utility for posting and sharing presentations in a secure environment using the Identity.net user management framework.” explained Rob Monster.

Today I read about Microsoft’s new TV ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, which was aired for the first time during yesterday’s National Football League broadcast. I then went online looking for it and, as expected, quickly found it on YouTube:

Bloomberg reports that the ad campaign will cost Microsoft a total of $300 million. The campaign has been developed by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, an ad agency that has done work for Burger King and Coke before.

The big question is: What is this ad about? Sure, the Windows logo can be seen for almost one second at the end of the 90-second spot. Bill and Jerry didn’t talk a lot about it, though, did they? I’m sure Microsoft and CPB want the spot to work as a teaser trailer to get people talk about it or think about the great things MSFT will (possibly) put on the market in the future. For me, the ad just did not work. If the purpose has been to make Windows look more sexy and appealing to the Apple-loving customers, I’m sure it didn’t work for the target group, either.

So, is Microsoft wasting $300 million? Think of the truckloads of money MSFT could have made or the millions of targeted visitors the company would have driven to its websites via direct navigation traffic, if only they had chosen to invest the $300M in domain names. It’s out of the question that they’re getting a lot of exposure in return for their massive ad spending. Blogs and other media are busy discussing the TV spot already (look at me, here I am writing about it). But I still think the money has sort of gone to waste, because people do not know what the ad is about and I doubt it will help Microsoft fight against Apple’s newly-found sex appeal.

Buy domains. Buy a search engine. Buy an online advertising company. But don’t throw the money away to get Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld into a shoe store together. Looks to me like Microsoft has not been the master of its domain so far.

But to be fair, the campaign has only started yesterday. Maybe we will be seeing something innovative from Microsoft and its ad agency, after all. Fingers crossed!

Google released its “Chrome” browser today. It is available for download here. It took a long time until Google finally got its own web browser. To be honest, I had been expecting a browser from them earlier. Anyway, it’s out now and it will put Google in an even better position with its search engine and on the Internet in general.

I’m sure the open-source browser will be extended by the large community of developers and it’s even possible that they will develop applications that will be a threat to Microsoft not only online but to Microsoft’s popular software products, too.

I haven’t given the browser a try myself, yet. TechCrunch has more details and screenshots.

These are two “Chrome” videos directly from Google: