[image courtesy of Got Zune]

Suddenly, everyone is a buzz because a website, zunehd.net has popped up. It easy to think that it’s a legit Zune site because 1) it’s a .net and we know that Zune’s official site as we speak is zune.net, 2) the placeholder that is there looks convincing enough to make one think that it’s legit and 3) we’ve been hearing so much about the coveted future Zune HD device.

My opinion (and this is my opinion) the site can’t be real.

From what I know about companies, why would MS purchase this site name just as all of this news, rumor and speculation is breaking out. Who on the team decided that this would be the opportune time to snatch it up? Personally, I don’t see why they can’t just use the current zune.net as the central hub to talk about any new devices and upgrades that are coming down the pike. There’s already a page there about devices, why can’t they just update that page to include the new device when ready?

Also, some people have looked into the WHOIS about the site and find out that it’s registered to an Altman fellow. You know what that tells me? Some guy in the middle of this hoopla went and bought the site. They knew that zunehd.net is going to be a valuable domain to have because that’s naturally a site people are going to type into their browsers. Cyber-squatting, as it’s called, is a common practice. I work for an e-commerce company so I can tell you there are people all of the time who wait to get word of the next hot thing and then they try to buy every possible domain related to it in the hopes that either it draws more website traffic to their operation or the company/celeb/whatever asks to purchase the domain from them and they end up making a tidy profit.

Now, I honestly don’t know what’s the deal with zunehd.net. I do think that given the information that’s presented in front of me I can’t see why it’s a site that MS just decided to buy and placemark the day after a bunch of news explodes over the internet. I would think that they would already have domains under their belt, or – in this particular case – just use what they already have established at zune.net.

But that’s just me.