According to TechCrunch’s recent article Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International, it is a prime example that your username is not totally yours. Lucky for the guy Harman Bajwa, that with TechCrunch’s help and enough responses, they released the vanity URL back to him. This is just one incident out of many others. Your username, if it holds anything of interest to a bigger company, could be pulled out from under you.
Now, just because Harman was able to, we all cannot get TechCrunch to stand in the corner. Kind of sucks for the regular people, huh?
Unfortunately, even though the usernames are a first come first serve, they are still subject to the social network’s policies. For example:
Facebook:
From Facebook’s Username: General Information
Question: Can Facebook take back a username that has already been claimed?Answer: Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason.
Of course, Facebook has other policies like for impersonations or trademark issues – however, they still can remove it. It is kind of like some states allowing businesses to employ and fire ‘at will.’
If you have not chosen a vanity URL, you should choose carefully and not use something that is trademarked. Be unique when creating your own, and if so, you might want to just use your full name to be safe. For those trying to brand themselves, and their ideal username is taken, use one closest to how you are branding yourself. For those using based on a website, you might try putting your extension. Example, I use ‘blondishnet’ for my Facebook and Twitter usernames, instead of just ‘blondish.’
As long as you are not impersonating another, not infringing on trademark, not username squatting, and staying within the general user policies of the social network, you should be fine.
What are your thoughts on the username policy for Facebook? for Twitter? for other social network sites?
As long as the username you want is not trademarked or offensive, I do not think they should be allowed to remove or reclaim it – especially if your username is actually a part of your legal name. I tend to choose usernames that are more or less unremarkable simply to make sure that I am able to actually get and keep my username.
I think that is why the user who had been involved in the recent Facebook username incident got his back. You make a good point. That is the reason I put my url in there too. Unfortunately, for some of my older social network profiles, unless I delete them and start over, I will be able to re-brand them. I probably should to keep consistent, but it is not like I have not made myself invisible…rofl.
This whole thing reminds me of the Mike Roe incident. Depending on who the larger company tries to go after, they'll risk the Streisand Effect. I agree with Charity. As long as its not trademarked or if you are not trying to impersonate another person, usernames should not be usurped.
Agreed! I really think this is just a bit too much. I do see the other side where people who try to squat on usernames to possibly get money, but in all honesty… I still am not all that keen on the trademark as there are only so many ways to call any business. It gets ridiculous sometimes.
Interesting and educating information…..Facebook’s new username policy unveiled on 13 June 2009 puts more emphasize and allows users to create personalized username for their Facebook pages. Maybe this could be an opportunity for Trademark owners but a little risk could be there. Any unrelated person could use the owner’s marks as username without any license or authorization. This new policy is based on Fist Come & First Serve…..