Friend and social media enthusiast Erica O’Grady alerted me last night to a little legal dust up that forced the Digg like site with a woman’s touch to change its name from Sk!rt to Kirtsy.com
I met the founders briefly during SxSW and think they are some pretty cool women. While I am bummed they had to go through this, am very happy it is earlier in their growth. Might even be just the sort of thing that gets them enough attention to bust out over the top and get some real traction with new users (though having all the current users updating links on their posts and sites has gotta be tough).
The Bloggess has a great and snarky post that gets into some of the details (and a bit of the speculation regarding the allegedly evil penises behind the forced name change). Ellen Centor has a more legally oriented retelling of the tale on Blogher, complete with some of the dates and legal reasoning behind it.
Update: to make it clear, I think Morriss was within its rights to seek the protection of the courts on this (as anyone with a legal background who reads the account on Blogher will tell you) they clearly have been working on a digital strategy for their new site and brand for some time as you can tell by visiting their site Skirt.com and reading the story behind the publication, which includes the many years of history the editor has in advance of this little dustup.
#1 by Erica O’Grady - May 13th, 2008 at 00:35
Although it’s a bummer of a situation – I’m really proud of my Skirty/Kirtsy Gals for taking the high road 😉 And I can’t wait to see where they go from here 😉