Twitter late last week filed a UDRP complaint, notably its first ever since the company was founded, in an effort to obtain ownership over the (currently parked) domain name twittersearch.com – as you can see here.

Obviously, Twitter is right to do this, since the domain is likely to cause some confusion, although we should note Twitter hasn’t managed to secure a trademark for the term ‘twitter’ in the United States so far, despite multiple attempts.

Update: my bad, they haven’t had any success in getting a trademark on the word ‘tweet’, but they do own the ‘twitter’ trademark.

Twitter of course has a popular search product that bears the obvious name Twitter Search, so I’d do the exact same thing if I were them.

That said, they took their sweet time to make the move – twittersearch.com was first registered back in March 2007.

A quick WHOIS search reveals that the owner of the contested domain name has opted to hide his or her identity, and the domain name is currently inactive, leading to a placeholder page riddled with ads.

Next up, twitter-search.com?

Update 2: DomainNameWire on ‘Why Twitter Singled Out TwitterSearch.com’. Also, the owner is apparently Popvox, the same company that’s behind TwitterVision.com.

Twitter Goes After Twittersearch.com

Gilt Groupe has made a name for itself, particularly in the United States, for operating a successful flash sales site that offers its members products and experiences at heavily discounted prices for a limited period of time.

Now, the company is turning to traditional e-commerce for its next trick.

Gilt this morning announced that it will be debuting a full-price men’s business as a dedicated website in Summer 2011 (to coincide with Pre-Fall 2011 collections).

The company says the new site, the name of which hasn’t been disclosed yet, will offer a selection of men’s apparel, accessories, athletic gear, gadgets, and more. Aside from a “state-of-the-art shopping experience”, the site promises to throw editorial content into the mix.

John Auerbach, currently General Manager of Gilt Groupe’s $100 million+ Gilt MAN business, will be President of the new site. Brooke Cundiff, formerly Director of Men’s Brand management at Gilt rival Rue La La and Associate Divisional Merchandise Manager of Saks Fifth Avenue, will become Divisional Merchandising Manager of the new business.

Brian Kalma, formerly head of user experience at Gilt and prior to that head of user experience and web strategy at Zappos, will be in charge of user experience for the new site.

Gilt Groupe says the mixture of brands on the full-price site will be similar to the curated assortment currently available on Gilt MAN, and items will live on the site according to seasonality in contrast to its current flash sales model.

Kevin Ryan, founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe in a statement says the company has already signed up 400,000 male customers and 350 brand partners to date.

Online fashion retail stores seem to be having quite an upswing of late, with Google launching Boutiques.com and eBay running a one-stop-shop for all things fashion.

Flash Sales Site Gilt Groupe To Open Traditional Online Retail Store For Men