I was waiting for public transportation one day, in an urban metropolis far, far away and ran across a free little publication called Skirt! At first I was down right giddy, it looked so cute! Half way through, I realized that the editors of Skirt! made some major assumptions about their readers and frankly it made me a little uncomfortable as those assumptions did not fit me. Regardless of how you feel about Skirt! politics, you have to agree that you do not pick up a FREE publication called Skirt! for credible social and political commentary, much less such commentary run along side advertisements for a ladies night at Club ChiChi. So, when I saw tags on blogs for Sk*rt I was quite turned off, assuming that Skirt! had some sort of social bookmarking feature on their website.

A few weeks ago I discovered that Sk*rt actually had NOTHING to do with Skirt! Sk*rt was pretty awesome, it was like Digg for girls. I promptly added it to my daily internet routine. Along the way I discovered that Skirt!, or should I say publishing conglomerate Morris Communications, had taken Sk*rt to court in order to obtain the sk-rt.com domain. The court found in favor of Sk*rt, as they established their website long before Skirt! obtained its own domain name (skirt.com). One would think that this might resolve the issue, and we could all live happily ever after. Sadly, this was not to be the case. Skirt!, a large publication with deep pockets, threated to continue brining legal action against Sk*rt until they won or ran Sk*rt into bankrupcy with legal fees. The ladies at Sk*rt decided it was just too much drama, and decided to change their name to Kirtsy.com (source).

Honestly, I think the Sk*rt/Kirtsy ladies got the better end of the deal. First, they actually won the court case, showing that they are in fact in the right, and that Skirt! is just kind of a corporate bully. Second, as Domain Name Wire points out, sk-rt.com’s screwy name inevitably ended up driving traffic to Skirt! Since they have overlapping demographics this was a very good thing for Skirt! Finally, I am sure there are others who dislike Skirt!, but would love kirtsy.com/sk*rt and have been turned off by the sk*rt name. So, in the end I think Kirtsy will be even more successful than sk*rt, I am definitely looking forward to spending a lot of time on Kirtsy in the future.

Read more:

• Read, Write, Web
• Kirtsy Blog
• Blogher
• The Blogess

Images from theblogess.com and kirtsy