The New Porn.com: When Bad Things Happen To Good Domains

Aside from half a one bedroom condo on the Upper East Side or a few pounds of imported prosciutto at Balducci's, what else can you buy for $9 million these days? Well, if you're a global internet porn conglomerate you could have purchased the domain name porn.com for that tidy sum just last year. Of course, the bigger question is: What would you have done with it once you got it? About nine months have passed since that historic transaction and now we have at least one answer, as the new and (maybe?) improved Porn.com relaunched itself as the self-styled "World's Biggest Porn Site" this week.

We guess it's no surprise that the new site is a massive, subscriber-only porn clearinghouse; they've got to earn back that $9 million somehow. Membership gets you access to thousands of pictures, video on demand, DVD downloads, webcams and access to dozens of other paysites in their larger network. It's the "throw it all on the wall and see what sticks" approach to adult content, and will certainly improve the odds that potential subscribers will find something worthwhile.

The free preview content that might entice them to actually join is kind of lacking, however: those video clips that start playing when you click on the thumbnails on the splash page cut to a signup pitch before the going gets good. And having all those enticing looking previews just made us remember that there are plenty of free video sharing sites out that don't require you to spend anything — why pay $24.95 a month when you can get all the hospital blowjobs, birthday bukkake, and hot Russian lesbians in schoolgirl outfits you want for free?

All things considered, though, the end result could have been a lot worse: the interface is clean and fairly well-organized, making it easy to browse for content (although not so easy to locate anything specific that you might be looking for.) And as a one-stop shopping and porn catch-all, it does have a massive amount of smut to choose from.

We just can't help thinking that a domain as special as Porn.com should be put to more loftier pursuits. The internet is porn, as we've been told so many times, and maybe the primary porn destination should offer something different (and less costly) than generic, semi-amateur, by-the-bucket porn fare — especially when you can already gorge yourself on that sort of thing on sites like RedTube and Megarotic for free. Maybe they should've considered spending that $9 million to buy out a weblog of sorts, with text by young, sexy writers and links to all manner of adult material, from the European art world to hardcore Porn Valley filth? And pink! It should definitely be pink!

On second thought ... nah, forget it.

· Porn.com (porn.com)
· "Porn.com Launches Today" (press release @ avn.com)

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Previously: The Ballad of Sex.com

Send an email to Dashiell Bennett, the author of this post, at dashiell@deadspin.com.

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