No joke: Dotster, one of the largest domain registration and hosting companies in the world, has just launched a service for MySpace users called "PimpedEmail". The product was announced a few hours ago. The idea is to sell unique email addresses through PimpedEmail's MySpace profile, which comes complete with an email generator. For instance, you could search for a name like "Rachel", and receive suggestions like "[email protected]".
What's more, they're suggesting the band search could also be a good branding platform for bands on MySpace Music - a band called "The Reality" could grab "[email protected]", for instance. Since there's no limit on the number of addresses you can create, you could also log in to the PimpedEmail control panel and create different addresses for each band member - "[email protected]", and so on. For an extra $2 per year, you can set your domain to redirect to your MySpace page. In fact, the entire service seems like an on-ramp to Dotster's main offering: you can navigate straight from PimpedEmail to the full Dotster account interface.
Sometimes companies try a little too hard to find the hip MySpace angle - Browster's MySpace browser is one example that I'm slightly skeptical about. Others, like Sonific's MySpace music player, Snapvine's voice comments service and TuneFeed's new MP3 player, make perfect sense. In some cases, companies are rolling out widgets as a marketing campaign for their core products, but Dotster's tactic is slightly different: they're taking an existing (and boring) service and tailoring it to the MySpace crowd. Perhaps it's a new form of MySpace marketing? To be honest, I've absolutely no idea how it will work out - getting people to use Dotster from a young age makes sense, but it's not clear that users will bite. Perhaps they're trying a bit too hard to be down with the kidz? Either way, I think it's worth a try.
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