It appears that Vespaquest and Vespaway have both been shut down, either because PiaggioUSA and CooperKatz were embarrassed by bad press, or too disorganized to pay hosting or domain fees.
I want to make it very, very clear that even though I find perverse joy in Piaggio’s dismal marketing failures;
- I’d find even more joy if they did something right. (I’ve seen the new MP3 print ads, and they’re fantastic, I hope they make the most of that opportunity.)
- It’s 100% inaccurate to call the blogs “failures” (as I have) because both were entirely successful, despite Piaggio’s lack of involvement. A child abandoned by her parents that ends up going to Harvard is not a failure, but the parents deserve none of the credit. The blogs were raised by wolves, Crystal and Neil specifically, and they did a really amazing job. I looked forward to both sites daily. Crystal’s Girlbike is among the best scooter sites out there, and I check it religiously. In the past, I’ve credited them with “making the most of what they had to work with,” which sounds negative, but it was meant as a compliment, they did a lot for Piaggio for just about nothing in return.
- Both blogs were important resources that should have remained on the web. Even though the most recent post on each was a bit embarassing for Piaggio, the other 99.9% of the content was good stuff, and good marketing for Piaggio. The content will be missed, and I hope Crystal and/or Neil can repost it on their own sites, or otherwise make it available once again (It’s still cached in Google).
CooperKatz has the domain vespaway paid until June 22, 2007 and vespaquest paid until July 6, 2007.
Ha, I guess I coulda looked that up. But it still could have been the hosting bill rather than the domain name bill.
That makes two sites Neil has had shut down in the last few months.