Sagamore Hill – the home of Theodore Roosevelt – is one of the prime field trip destinations for Long Island school kids. Between school trips and cub scout trips and other outings, I may have spent more time there than any member of the Roosevelt family. That means I got plenty of up-close-and-personal looks at TR’s enormous collection of hunting trophies.
The one I remember most was an umbrella stand, made out of an elephant’s foot.
As a kid, I had a hard time with this. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that the guy billed as one of the world’s foremost naturalists spent much of his time in nature blowing animals away with high-powered rifles.
Which brings us to the story of Bob Parsons.
In case you’ve missed the controversy, here’s a quick summary. Bob Parsons, the founder and CEO of GoDaddy, went to Zimbabwae on vacation. While there, he shot an elephant. He captured the whole thing on video, which he posted to his site. He claims that the animal he shot was doing massive damage to the crops grown by a local village and the elephant meat fed a whole lot of hungry people; his critics say there are much better ways of dealing with problem animals, and that his choice of vacation spots went to support the government that has played a fairly large role in keeping those people hungry.
Got all that?
In the wake of all this, I’ve seen lots of people posting reactions similar to this one from Internet entrepreneur Peter Shankman:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/petershankman/status/53554175526699009″]
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, necessarily. But here’s my problem with all the outcry…
Is anyone really surprised that the CEO of GoDaddy isn’t the most enlightened guy? I mean, the only reason anyone’s ever heard of his company – an outfit that provides a service one can buy for roughly the same price at any one of a hundred or so locations – is their string of “banned” soft-porn Super Bowl ads. The fact that he’d create a controversy and milk it into a long string of media avails shouldn’t be generating the Casablanca-memorial “Shocked! Shocked!” response from anyone.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure – I don’t use GoDaddy for any of my own sites. The reason has nothing to do with Bob Parsons’ vacation choices or his caveman approach to marketing. It’s the simple fact that GoDaddy’s online tools are very hard to use. Their web site is a compartmentalized mess with separate services and logins every three pages, interrupted only by incessant up-sell messaging.
Their phone customer service, in my experience, is excellent – but it has to be. The site is that hard to use.
Speaking of Upsell Messaging…
Are you a GoDaddy customer that wants to take your business elsewhere? Here are a few things you should know:
- If you’ve only used GoDaddy to register domains, you can move the management of those domains just about anywhere with minimal trouble.
- If you’ve used GoDaddy to host your web sites as well, the move can be a little more complicated. You’ll need to arrange an account with a new host and get everything copied over before flipping the switch. And you should anticipate some down time for your site when you do make the move.
- Don’t forget about the e-mail. If you’ve got e-mail accounts connected to the domain you’re moving, you’ll need to account for them as well. One option would be to use Gmail to manage e-mail for your personal or company domain.
Need some help getting set up with a new host? Contact us for a free estimate.