Judging by the name of an upcoming panel on ICANN's new ruling, the organizers must be the only New Yorkers to have missed the seminal Seinfeld episode featuring what is, arguably, the most famous contest ever televised.  Either that or the "iBreakfast" its hosting  on August 3rd called "Master of Your Domain?" is much more about abstaining from self-pleasure than its description implies. According to the website, the panel, presented by TECHmarketing, covers how ICANN 's decision to open up top-level domain (TLD) names in exchange for cash is a gold-rush for brands.  The iBreakfast will cover how companies can navigate the Wild West of registries to their advantage :

"ICANN's ruling on the domain registries forever altered the way brands, associations, and other entities are represented online.The 'dot com' era will soon be replaced with a myriad of possibilities involving 'dot brand' and 'dot generic' - essentially 'dot anything.' The implications for SEO and trademark protection are critical, and the opportunities presented to brands, industry associations - even investors - is exploding. Is this the new lakefront property bonanza of the Internet? This iBreakfast Conference will sort through the opportunities and surrounding issues."

Presumably it will feature a lot less hospital sponge baths, virgin girlfriends, and JFK Jr. gym sightings--though you never know.

But even as sites like Mashable have thrived, others have found Google+ much less hospitable. Yesterday Google+ took down ABC News Radio's profile, much to the chagrin of its the company's digital platform manager Dan Patterson.

Boing Boing spoke with Google about the issue and was told that brand account would be going live within a few months. They took down their official Boing Boing profile and replaced it with an intern who posted news links. But Xeni Jardin wasn't ready to stop asking why companies like Mashable and Ford seemed to be getting special treatment. "You can't ask orgs to simply not engage with such a powerful traffic mover. Not when Mashable has 72K followers or whatever. You can't just ask other brands to chill and wait until [whenever]," she wrote on Google+.

Mashable claimed innocence, which seemed a little odd given that they had reported on the fact that Google+ was asking businesses not to join.

A conspiracy thread quickly spread about Mashable, however, and dozens of Google + users conspired to report its presence as an abuse. And as Zach Behrens -- who jumped on this story first and did a great job rounding up details --pointed out at The Public Note, Google seems to be milking Mashable's rabid fan base for social juice to prime the pump on Google+. "Perhaps what's been most confusing is that Google has been actively promoting Mashable on Twitter. Of the 40 tweets since its launch, the Google+ Twitter account has given 14 links to Mashable."

Some Googlers, like software engineer Dewitt Clinton, tried to make this a principled stand.

But by that time, replied Xeni Jardin, the power players would already be established. "I think Google fucked up by not rolling out brand support on day one. Two months is an eternity on the internet."

UPDATE: As programer Jonathan Langdale point out -"You can see they [Mashable] have HTML code in their post.  Nobody else can seem to insert html code, or can we? This is probably a new business profile?"