We were chatting to an editor of a technology blog last night and he talked about how he had to call up the boss of Flickr to get someone who ‘owned’ a Flickr Group with their name, kicked off (the owner did ask for $25,000 of gadgets as a trade) We imagine a tech site has a bit of weight but could every brand do this?
As more social networks grow, it’s not just mis-spelt URLs that go to cybersquatters that brands have to worry about. Who owns their MySpace name? Their Facebook name? Their del.icio.us name?
And what happens when you find that the Flickr group that uses your brand name is an active community – a community that loves your brand. Do you go in heavy handed then, and swipe the ownership?
Just a thought.
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Great observation. Digital identity is going to be a huge issue moving forward in the future. If its acceptable to steal content and use it for your own, what will prevent opportunists from hijacking brand names, sites or entire identities? Brands are going to spend increasingly more time protecting their identity. You can find people impersonating brands on myspace (just look at bansky) and getting by quite well. It seems we now have con-men 2.0 on our hands.
October 6th, 2006 at 11:12 am