Almost 13,000 people on Bluesky have signed up with a “swifties.social” domain name, indicating their involvement in the Taylor Swift fan community. Other fandoms for artists like Beyoncé (about 900 members) and BTS (about 4,500 members) have also emerged.
These fan-driven domains, which function within the main Bluesky social server, came from a project that Bluesky developer Samuel Newman made in May 2023, before he was hired by the company. (Newman was also behind the third-party client Graysky before he got a job at Bluesky.) Newman’s tool allows anyone to claim subdomain handles from a domain that you own. For example, Newman bought “kawaii.social,” which now has about 450 members. Using his tool, we could technically snatch up “techcrunch.kawaii.social” as our domain, but alas, that might not be as consistent with our brand as our current “techcrunch.com” handle.