The .xxx extension has been a pretty controversial launch and it has been more than 10 years in the pipeline with ICANN taking a long time to agree the mandate of this domain and the complex way that it is being managed.

We inform our customers of most new Domain opportunities (for example, .fr (France) restrictions being relaxed this week and so we’ll be getting in touch with businesses to let them know about this too). It’s never our intention to ‘push’ customers into purchasing any product that won’t suit their needs; however we do feel that it’s important to give customers the choice. Because .xxx is an unusual Top Level Domain, we felt it appropriate to raise awareness and we’ve created specific content in our website to help educate a bit more, because registration criteria are very different to standard Top level Domains. The choice about what domain extensions to protect in a business portfolio will differ according to the needs and requirements of that business.

For example, namesco.xxx has actually been blocked under the Sunrise B period as one of our brands we are protecting. Whois information is not available from the Registry until 08th December and at that point the domain availability search will show it has already been removed from the registration pool of available domains.
Conversely, names.xxx is a brand identity that we wanted to protect; however the domain was already taken by the .xxx Registry and so this is something that we won’t have the opportunity to reserve.

We actually have a team of advisors in house who work alongside customers to provide online brand protection support and who help businesses define their most appropriate domains to protect … because none of us can afford to protect them all. During 2012 Global Top Level Domain deregulation will mean that the market is flooded with new extensions and there will be even more discussion about which Internet spaces brands should occupy. Our intention will be to inform our customer base of any new extensions so our customers can decide for themselves.

We’re always happy to get feedback about our communications and it’s no surprise that such a controversial extension as .xxx is causing healthy debate. Thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply to my wee post and to give insight into the reason behind the email pitch, as well as more information on the .xxx TLD. It’s good to know that there are still some companies that are interested enough to clarify their emails, when some healthy criticism is aimed at an email they send out. As mentioned previously, I regularly use Namesco, in fact, I promote the company to visitors on my site. I was simply giving my opinion to readers, who after reading the email, felt that they had no choice but to go out and spend £79.99 on a domain name, because if they didn’t, their ratings were going to go down the toilet. That’s not the case and I wanted to make that point. Thanks again for commenting on my blog BM