Protecting one’s brand is pretty much standard practice for large online properties like Facebook. As a result, the social network giant now owns hundreds of domain names, of which only a few are actually used. The rest have been taken over from others for “safekeeping.”
We find it rather amusing that Facebook itself now owns domain names such as:
Most of these have plenty of variations for .org, .net, .biz, etc.
There is a small chance that someone at Facebook showed remarkable foresight and registered these domain names for preventive purposes, but we highly doubt that.
We assume that these are mostly domain names that other people have registered first, perhaps even run websites on, which have then been taken over by Facebook via a domain dispute (which they will essentially always win).
In general, it’s just not a good idea to register a domain name with a brand name in it. Just don’t do it.
Other domain names owned by Facebook
Although it’s funny that Facebook owns a bunch of anti-Facebook domain names, these just make up a small portion of the hundreds of domain names it owns. Others include:
- Typos like Faceobok.com and a ton of other variations. So-called typosquatting is a practice where someone registers common typos of a domain name to benefit from the traffic they get when people enter an incorrectly spelled website address. For a site with as much traffic as Facebook, even a tiny portion would be significant.
- Brand intrusions of various kinds, mostly domain names with Facebook + something else. These make up the largest chunk of domain names owned by Facebook. For example, they include attempts by someone to cash in on FacebookPorn.com, FacebookSex.com and SexyFacebook.info. And pardon the pun, but they were probably met by someone from FacebookForLawyers.com, another domain name now owned by Facebook. Gaining ownership of these kinds of domain names is a constant struggle for Facebook.
While we’re on the subject of domain names, here’s a quick tip: Don’t forget that Facebook also owns FB.com and has redirected it to Facebook.com, if you want to save yourself some typing.
And in case you wondered, yes, Facebook has held on to the original TheFacebook.com.
Data source: DomainTools name server report.