eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) wrapped up its eBay Live conference in Boston over
the weekend. The annual get-together of buyers, sellers, and service
providers was -- by most accounts -- a festive affair (minus that
minor Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) distraction). New features to the
marketplace were revealed, enhancing navigation and security
throughout the site. A summer pricing promotion was even announced,
keeping prices in check instead of the customary fee hikes.

The event coincided with the launch of Windorphins.com, which eBay
North American president Bill Cobb introduced to the crowd. The new
site takes a whimsical approach to the science of emerging victorious
after a successful eBay auction. Clever copy of this "scientific
breakthrough" fills the site, along with humorous video clips that
hammer the concept home. Windorphins, after all, is the literal
collision of win and endorphins.

So far, so good. The problem is that this is where I have to insert
myself into the story. Since 1995, I've been blessed to cover the dot-
com boom, bust, and renaissance from the Foolish vantage point of a
financial analyst. These are front row seats, with the luxury of a
sneeze guard separating myself from the active participants.

Well, that sneeze guard shattered to bits earlier this year. And to
think that it all started with a spell check.

Looking for Windorphins.com
eBay CEO Meg Whitman spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
back in March. I was covering the presentation, and wanted to grasp at
something thematic to make my story stand out. I found that when
Whitman explained that one of the goals at eBay was to "continue to
reignite the core auction experience, or what we call the windorphins
business."

Windorphins?

"People have always come to eBay for the fun and the thrill of the
hunt as opposed to just a more traditional clinical retail
experience," she added.

Bingo. I can work with that.

Even though Whitman indicated that the word was the convergence of
winning and endorphins, I didn't want to botch a term that my
spellchecker was spitting back as bogus. I turned to Google, where
billions of pages are indexed, only to come up empty. There wasn't a
single reference to windorphins.

Had I stumbled onto a virgin buzzword? It certainly seemed that way.
As a domain collector -- someone that has been buying, selling, and
developing domains as a profitable hobby since the 1990s -- I was
intrigued to find that the Windorphins.com domain name was freely
available. I'm not out to become a dot-com mogul like Marchex (Nasdaq:
MCHX) or CNET (Nasdaq: CNET), though it's a nice distraction between
the bylines.

I registered the domain on March 8, three days after Whitman spoke at
the conference, indicating as such in my article covering eBay's
presentation. For months, the only Google reference to the term was
from my article. Really. Then I got the call.

It was mid-May, and a friendly person from eBay's corporate
communications department wanted to talk to me. That isn't unusual. We
ruffle feathers from time to time, and whether it's an opinion we want
to defend or a mistake that we will want to retract, corporate
communications departments are often there to smooth out the
differences.

I was going over any recent published references to eBay in my head,
when she explained that she wanted to talk about my registration of
Windorphins.com.

A tale of losedorphins
She indicated that the company wanted the domain back. Back? I'm no
thief. I'm no cybersquatter. I had registered the domain in good
faith, hoping that windorphins would catch on as an industry buzzword.
No one from eBay had any interest in registering the name or filing
for a trademark when I stepped up to claim it.

She told me that it was a lapse on eBay's part. That Whitman had
spilled the beans prematurely and that I had beaten the company's
domain name manager by hours in landing the dot-com moniker.

It was a ridiculously awkward position to be in. She explained that
eBay had indeed filed for a trademark and was set to use it for a
marketing campaign later in the year.

I was too conflicted to play hardball. The last thing that I wanted to
be was an enemy of one of the truly great online success stories of
our generation.

    * eBay is an active recommendation in the Motley Fool Stock
Advisor newsletter service.
    * I am a huge user of the site, having amassed a 100% perfect
feedback ratings score of 172 over the years.
    * Attempting to sell the domain to a public company like eBay
would be unethical, in part because Fool.com restricts the size of
gifts that we are allowed to receive. Trust me. I had to return a
fresh, pre-release Nintendo Wii last year.
    * I'm no litigation magnet. If my wife and I didn't sue when
doctors misdiagnosed our youngest son's brain cancer a year before it
was ultimately detected (and successfully treated), this wasn't going
to get my goat.

So I stopped her a few minutes into the hard sell. I come in peace. I
had missed the trademark filing, and surely would have never even
bothered with the registration if I knew that I was ruffling through
eBay's legal property over simply Whitman's colorful vernacular. I
then worked with the company's intellectual property counsel and
global domain manager to hand over Windorphins.com later in the week.

Case closed? Well, not exactly. The whole situation had me scratching
my head. If this was such an important part of eBay's marketing
strategy, why didn't it register the domain as it filed for the
trademark? Surely a Web-savvy company like eBay wouldn't be so remiss,
right?

Right?

Well, it turns out that eBay didn't file the Windorphins trademark
until March 23, more than two weeks after I registered the domain.

Was I duped or misled into handing over the domain? Keep in mind that
I didn't even ask for the domain registration fee that I paid, so this
Windorphins.com domain emphasis is on my dime through March of next
year. But, no, I'm a friend of eBay. I can be objective enough to see
that this is a company taking the right steps to bounce back from
sluggish stateside listings lately by emphasizing the marketplace's
fun factor.

Next time, I'll go with whimsical endorphins or whimdorphins
It didn't take long for eBay to kick the Windorphins campaign into
high gear. Ads are showing up on commuter trains and I'm guessing that
it won't be long before the video clips on the site begin showing up
on television.

eBay's marketing past has always been peppered with fun. Surely you
have to remember the "Do it eBay" ads that took classics like My Way
and On Broadway and turned them into show-stopping eBay-pimping
musicals. A more recent example is the brilliant "it" campaign that
features consumers getting excited over getting "it" in the form of
big block letters.

eBay knows that at the end of the day, it's simply an auction site.
Sites like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Overstock (Nasdaq: OSTK)
offer online trading platforms. Sites like Craigslist and now even
Facebook offer merchandise listings.

eBay's killer advantage -- a thicker moat than anyone realizes -- is
that it's where serious bidders and sellers congregate. Getting the
masses to come over involves painting a world of whimsy, where every
listing is an adventure. Whether it's channeling Sinatra, block
letters, or now windorphins, it sets eBay apart from the fading
competition.

So I have no problem stepping back from the domain name fuss to accept
that windrophins is just what eBay needs at a moment when its
stateside listings can use a little chemical boost. I'm just glad that
I don't have to leave a feedback rating on the transaction itself. It
wouldn't be pretty, if only because I'm grasping at windorphins that I
can no longer internally produce.