Conde Nast Digital made a bulk purchase of 285 .com domains associated with the name of the company’s social link sharing community Reddit.

While the purchase was probably a defensive move to prevent others from infringing upon the Reddit brand, it is curious that the company didn’t make this move earlier, especially after all the milestones Reddit has achieved in 2011 alone.

However, this wouldn’t be the first time Conde Nast has taken its sweet time to do things that would be in the best interests of its property.

Reddit has been known to spin-off promotional sites (Reddit gifts, Reddit.tv, Reddit Radio) to interact with its community in many different ways. So there are at least 285 projects that now have domain names associated with them. Some of the more interesting domains include: redditradar.com, redditvision.com, zenreddit.com, and playreddit.com.

Neither Conde Nast nor Reddit has announced any particular plans for the domains.

Image via Bobsworth Industries