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 PacificPoker.com
is not the oldest cardroom out there, but its history predates the birth of online poker. Prior to Google and Yahoo stopping
taking direct ads from sites offering online gambling, the highest profile gambling site was Casino on Net. Searches for all
kinds of terms on Yahoo would display a Casino on Net banner. It was probably the single most famous, or notorious, Internet
advertiser at the time.
When the folks behind Casino on Net (now traded as 888 Holdings on the London Stock Exchange) decided to get into the poker
market, the released the Pacific Poker software. Given how clunky the resource-intensive first version of the software was,
it's a miracle Pacific Poker survived at all. However, the 888 market machine kicked into high gear, and the software's
weaknesses got overlooked by enough people who loved the juicy games.
The software is just fine now, but the marketing is more than a little odd. The Casino on Net name has been basically
retired, despite its former high profile. 888.com is the company's flagship domain. While that web address is obviously
brandable and easy to remember, one has to wonder what the point of the PacificPoker.com domain is, especially since both
888.com and PacificPoker.com rank in the top 15 for an online poker search. On the one hand they are splitting their search
marketing between two redundant brands. On the other, a company with such a notorious history may be strategizing correctly
to keep more than one domain and brand active to prevent a catastrophic death penalty against one domain -- which is always
possible since the long legacy of the various 888 marketing teams (including subcontractor/super-affiliates like the
unsavory Tradel.net outfit) has left spammy residue all over the Internet. If you took a random walk around the Internet, it
wouldn't be long before you found a link on some apparently abandoned domain pointing at one or the other of 888's web properties.
It's also important to note that unlike less clever online outfits, 888.com and PacificPoker.com are not duplicate
domains. They are two unique domains from which you can download the same software. |
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