We don’t usually like to show off too much, but some research landed in our inbox the other day which says we’re officially the biggest web host in the UK. We think that’s worth shouting about.

Netcraft (which provides research data on all sorts of online stuff) just released their latest hosting provider switching analysis. 123-reg is part of a group of several brands: 123-reg, WebFusion, Donhost and Supanames. Together, we’re the biggest web host in the UK. By a mile. We reckon that’s quite an achievement.

The research shows that we host over 1.5 million websites. Our nearest UK competitor only hosts a bit over 600,000. That’s quite a gap.

We’ve knocked up a quick graph in Excel to show the difference between us and our nearest UK competitors. Click to see it full-size - the numbers up the side are the percentage of UK websites each of the companies along the bottom hosts.

You may be thinking, well that’s great for you, but what does that mean for me? Well, if you’re a customer, you benefit from this in loads of ways. Here are just a few:

• It means you can trust us with your domains and websites. We’re not some fly-by-night company operating out of a lockup somewhere. We’re here to stay.
• We’ve got a big, powerful infrastructure to support all those websites, with massive capacity - for instance, that’s why we’re able to offer unlimited bandwidth with every dedicated server.
• Economies of scale mean we can buy things in bulk at a discount, and that discount gets passed onto you in the form of our low prices.
• We can innovate and attract partners to produce exciting new products, like Google Analytics Automation and the WebWorx24 custom web design service.

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Richard Moross is the 30-year-old entrepreneur behind MOO, a British company which sells MiniCards (tiny, custom-printed calling cards), stickers, postcards and greeting cards.

I spoke to him about both the business and the internet to find out what advice he’d give to budding online entrepreneurs.

Inspiration

The idea for MOO came to Richard when he was thinking about how the way we connect with each other has changed.

“In the past”, he says “a card would be for a business identity. We created a market for a personal card.”

Many businesses begin in similar ways. Rather than coming up with a revolutionary idea, they take an existing product and look at it from a new angle.

Raising the cash

It didn’t take long to get things rolling. Richard left his job and started looking for funds to get his idea off the ground. He says it was only “two to three months from leaving my job to having money in the bank”. The cash came from business angels – individuals who invest their own cash in startups.

Raising money this way isn’t always easy, and he puts his quick success down to a combination of ideas and drive: “Angels are good at finding people with ideas who’ll work their arses off to make things happen.”

If you’re in the same position, do what Richard did and find people who can help: “I played it by the book. I garnered as much information as I could from people I respected, from people who knew what they were talking about.”66666666666666666
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A high-profile domain name dispute came to an end earlier this week. MySpace, the News Corporation-owned social networking site won the right to have the domain name myspace.co.uk transferred to it.

The ruling was made as part of the arbitration process run by the .uk domain registry, Nominet. You can read the full story over on the Register.

At first glance, the outcome looks a bit surprising. The domain’s owner, Total Web Solutions (TWS) registered myspace.co.uk in 1997 - more than a decade ago, and some years before MySpace itself launched. Case closed, surely?

As it turned out, no. The deciding factor in the dispute was not how long the domain had been registered for, but rather what it had been used for during that time.

Here’s the key issue: TWS had placed adverts on myspace.co.uk. These adverts were keyword-driven - the keywords in this case being ones which related to MySpace and social networking. MySpace argued that these adverts meant TWS was unfairly profiting from an association with MySpace, and that this constituted abuse.

To cut a long story short (if you want the ins and outs, the full report is online), the independent expert who made the ruling found in favour of MySpace:

“The income the Respondent [TWS] is deriving from its pay per click links at the site of the Domain Name [myspace.co.uk] derives in part as a consequence of it being able to trade off the reputation of the Complainant [MySpace]. Accordingly the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent is an Abusive Registration.”

As you’d expect, this has created a lot of debate online. The comments on the Register cover the whole spectrum (with some first class ranting as well) and Stan Schroeder at Mashable remains “unconvinced the ruling was fair”.

As for me, I really can’t decide. My initial reaction was to wonder how MySpace could even have a case, but it’s one of those situations that’s much more complicated than it originally appeared. What do you think? Help us out by voting in the poll (scroll down a bit and you’ll see it on the right of this page), or leave a comment to give your views.

There’s certainly a lesson in this. If you are fortunate enough to own a domain which has something in common with a well-known site, be careful about what you use it for. Any attempt to profit from people getting your site mixed up with the big name could see you lose the domain completely.

UPDATE: This one’s not quite over yet. From the looks of the Nominet site (scroll down to DRS 04962), TWS is set to appeal the ruling and has sent a notice of intent to appeal to Nominet.

This means they they now have 15 days to get in a full appeal notice. That should explain their reasons for appealing and include any new evidence.

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