Register.com's live and thrivin'

As usual, Thursday delivered on its promise of a full line-up of fetes. Getting in my boat-time, I started off this night at Register.com's friends and family Riverfront Fiesta on August 12th at The Barge at Chelsea Piers. I met a few register.com-ers (there's about 60 now), including Sascha Mornell, Sacha Keogan and Robert Pina. The company is growing rapidly and is the first of the five ICANN-accredited domain registration companies to go live. Unlike their competitors, who have other aspects to their business, Register.com is completely focused on just domain name registration. They also are intent on making their employees happy and feel empowered--each one (regardless of position) gets $50 a month towards a leased computer or a DSL line at home. Cool! Richard Forman, Pres. & CEO, was a little hesitant to talk with me--apparently there were some competitors in the crowd--and as we hadn't yet met, he wasn't sure who I was. Fortunately Josh Glantz of Rare Medium spoke right up and confirmed that I'd been around the scene for quite some time and was "okay." Whew! Josh was telling us how he was just about to buy a house in Jersey, when his wife suddenly refused! Why? Because he's living the life of all us new media worker-bees and doesn't get home before 10:30 PM and leaves at 7:00 AM!

I also met Alex Sodi of Manhattan Creative Partners (who designed the logo for Register.com) and Myles Weissleder (I-Traffic) introduced me to his cousin Adam. Adam, a recent MBA grad, just moved to NYC after a disruptive experience with his first job out of school. Digital Daytimer hired him for a job in SF, CA. He got a car, and apartment and arrived at work on time, only to be among a massive layoff the 2nd day! I tell ya, this biz is tough!

Jon Serbin of Morgan Stanley made an appearance at this fine soiree, and along with all the other guests enjoyed the fine Southwestern BBQ by Lightship Catering. Bernardo Joselevich introduced me to a bunch of people like James Kreckler, Jay Chicoy and George Presto of Doubleclick; Jonathan Nathan and Andrew Weinstein of JNMedia; and Lisa Castleman of Fox News. Benjamin Willman and Roger Hollander were telling me about their new company (6 mos old) UStreamIt and the wild party they had at the Cheetah club the night before. Their company allows users to have their own channel where you can stream your content from anywhere to anywhere anytime! Just before leaving I met Stephanie Worley of BusinessWire and John Stampfel of Video Monitoring Services. And as I walked out, people were still dancing to "You Spin Me Round" and enjoying that wide open bar on the side of the wide open Hudson River....