URLs and unintended consequences

Several years ago I visited the website for a company called Experts Exchange, a company that brokers information exchange between computer system specialists. As I typed in the URL, I realized something that must have been plaguing their marketing department right about then: one look at the URL http://www.expertsexchange.com, and your brain fishes out the conspicuous “sex” in the middle and completes the sentence. Presto! ExpertSexChange.com. You can almost hear the ad jingle: “Put your gender in a blender at Expert Sex Change.” Not surprisingly, they changed their domain name to experts-exchange.com.

But it does show how surprisingly easy it is to make a big goof. A site called Domain Rookie just published a funny piece entitled Domain Name Mispronouncings. He leads with ExpertsExchange, but he’s got some other good ones too. Some are more credible than others. TherapistFinder (TheRapistFinder) seems real, but I don’t for one second believe there is a real pen company called Pen Island. The domain name for that last one will be left as an exercise for the reader.