Domain name 'aspen.com' remains idle
Blue Tent Marketing
Troy Hooper - Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
Sat 01/13/2007 08:00PM MST
For the last six years, aspen.com -- the most obvious Internet address for this town -- has sat dormant. And its resurrection doesn't seem to be imminent.
Georgia-based Morris Communications Co. purchased aspen.com for a pretty penny at the height of the Internet explosion. The price was never disclosed but the seller, former Woody Creek resident Ed Bastian, confirmed it didn't come cheap.
"I didn't make enough to retire. But I made enough to send my kids to college and start Spiritual Paths (a nonprofit)," said Bastian, who now lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., after health complications forced his move to lower ground.
Despite the substantial investment Morris Communications made to acquire aspen.com, the domain name is not in use -- and it hasn't been for years. Unlike Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Vail and other ski resorts, Aspen does not have a Web site that Internet users can find simply by typing the town's name plus ".com."
Morris Communications purchased aspen.com in 1999. In 2000 it sold its Colorado media portfolio, which included the Glenwood Post and Snowmass Sun, to Nevada-based Swift Newspapers, which owns The Aspen Times. But it kept the aspen.com domain.
"I've called them and asked, 'Is there some way to get this domain back in the community again so Aspen can benefit from it?' They never engaged in the discussion seriously. I feel bad that domain is lost to the community," Bastian said. "It's a shame that a business that was developed locally, that had a lot of passion and a lot of idealism, that had a domain that was supposed to be used for the benefit of the community has now been put in a deep freeze."
Aspen.com hasn't been in use since 2001. It is unknown if it is for sale.
"We still do definitely own the domain but we don't comment as a matter of policy on what we might be buying or selling," said Chris Bender, spokesman for Morris, which owns newspapers, magazines, radio and Internet sites nationwide.
Two years after Morris purchased aspen.com, Wall Street experienced its largest one-day fall in history when the inflated dot-com bubble burst. U.S. markets lost $2 trillion in value. Bill Gates reportedly lost $30 billion.
While e-commerce ultimately persevered, the mania surrounding domain names has subsided. New laws also were passed to deter cyber squatting -- the phenomenon in which entrepreneurs registered popular domain names they had no interest in using and, instead, waited for a buyer to come along and purchase it for a lot of money.
It can be far cheaper to buy a domain name now than it was seven or eight years ago. For years, the Aspen Chamber Resort Association's digital presence could be found at
www.aspenchamber.org. It also wanted to register
www.aspenchamber.com but a company in Durango owned it and was asking ACRA to pay between $10,000 and $15,000. Last year, ACRA took over the domain for $15.99.
"A lot of people were buying Web sites, pricing them in advance and trying to sell it to you. Now with new laws in effect, they finally gave it up," said ACRA President Debbie Braun, noting that aspen.com would be a "great Web site."
With the help of world-renowned software guru Bill Joy, Bastian built aspen.com in the early 1990s to create an interactive community site to provide information and facilitate communication about Aspen. Aspen was among the first few towns in the nation with its own Web site when the Internet went mainstream. When Morris bought the domain, it enjoyed a brief stint as an online news site.
But now it is no more. It is unclear whether the site will ever be restored.
"Morris retained aspen.com probably because nobody would pay them the amount of money that they wanted for it. Morris treats it like a piece of property that they hang on to. It adds value to their balance sheet," Bastian said.
"Part of the lesson is there are certain kinds of businesses that require local passion, pride and community involvement in order to become successful. When you have foreign ownership in a small town of a (potentially) major media site, often times the public can suffer because the company owned by the people outside of the town aren't involved in the affairs of the community. It's really too bad."
