Infotech Lead Asia: Pope Francis is powering several 100s of online domain name registrations, according to Go Daddy.
Web hosting solutions and domain registration provider Go Daddy says the selection of keywords such as Pope, Francis, Bergoglio and Habemus Papam were used in identifying the new domain names registered with Go Daddy.
In the first hour 479 domains were registered with Go Daddy, while within the first 10 minutes of the announcement, more than 100 domain names were registered. The number of registration is growing as we write this article.
In fact, the domain name PopeFrancis.com was registered by a Go Daddy customer in April, 2010. Seems the PopeFrancis.com account holder is a visionary.
Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was selected as Pope Francis I on Thursday.
However, technology consumption at the Sistine Chapel is not at the peak during the election of the Pope. To ensure secrecy and prevent electronic snooping on the 115 cardinals casting their votes, all tech devices were banned.
People who have registered Pope Francis and other name may not be using their web names. But they may try to make dollars from this deal.
For instance, PopeBenedictXVI.com was sold for more than $5,000 in 2005.
Meanwhile, as the Vatican taps Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to lead the Catholic Church, the pope’s Twitter account has been reactivated. Bergoglio’s first official Tweet as @Pontifex was Habemus papam franciscum (We have a Pope Francis) and it had been retweeted almost 65,000 times. The account has almost 1.8 million followers. It is an instant success to Twitter.
Apparently, the account was actually the Vatican’s official account, but was changed to @Pontifex after a the new pope was chosen, according to CBS News.
The original @Pontifex Twitter account went into hibernation this past month in light of Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign from the papacy due to health reasons.
Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter in December, garnering more than 1.5 million followers before he ended his tweeting. @Pontifex now has more than 1.6 million followers.
Ambika K
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