you can't keep a good man down

Team Coco arises

LOS ANGELES — When Conan O’Brien wanted to start a Web site last winter, he was reminded that he did not own his dot-com name, ConanOBrien.com.

Gainfully employed by NBC for some two decades, a personal Web site had hardly been a priority until, well, his tenure as host of “The Tonight Show” screeched to an end in January. Suddenly he needed a new platform. He joined Twitter, and last month, helped by just a few tweets, Mr. O’Brien largely sold out his 30-city comedy tour, which starts on Monday in Eugene, Ore.

Because ConanOBrien.com is owned by an online squatter, Mr. O’Brien’s representatives decided to adopt Team Coco, one of his fans’ chosen names, as the host’s own. They even licensed a fan’s artwork for the tour poster. TeamCoco.com is a single Web page now, but as the tour gets under way, the site is to expand.

“We didn’t start the fire; we just add a log now and then,” said an employee of Mr. O’Brien’s, who, like three others interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because he did not have permission to speak publicly about Web strategy.

Read the entire article here.

This image was produced by Mike Mitchell, an artist in Los Angeles, as a show of support for Mr. O’Brien in January, and immediately became a viral hit. It can be downloaded as a poster here.