Taylor Swift Buys Own Adult Domains, Should Big Brands Do The Same?

Taylor Swift has bought two adult domain names that feature her name.

The US star has purchased TaylorSwift.adult and TaylorSwift.porn to stop other people buying the domains when they become available.

From the 1st June, the domain endings .porn and .adult will become available for purchase from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN run auctions for domain names, but decided to give a select group of companies and celebrities the chance to buy the domains in a pre-release sale.

Microsoft also decided to partake, buying Office.adult and Office.porn.

Although this pre-release cost brands like Microsoft $2,500 each, the .porn and .adult domains will cost $99.

Other celebrities who have bought the adult domains are Richard Branson and Stringfellows.

ICANN are recommending that companies who may not want their brands associated with a .porn .adult or .sucks domain should consider buying them when they go on sale.

Daniel Foster, co-founder and technical director of 34SP.com said: “Businesses should do everything in their power avoid being associated with negative messages — and it’s hard to imagine domain names like .sucks and .porn will foster positivity.

“Clearly some big brands are already taking this seriously by registering controversial names while we are still in a mandated period. However, after June 1st it becomes a free for all, so I’d advise all businesses with even a slight worry about how this could affect their business to swoop up the domains sooner rather than later.”

Back in 2011, non-profit ICANN decided to expand the number of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, offering hundreds of new domain endings to add to .com, .co.uk and .net.

Last month it was revealed that Google bought the entire .app domain for $25m.

Previous domain auctions have seen Amazon win .buy for $5m and Dot Tech spending $6.7m on .tech.

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