Jan 29th, 2009 |
I’m watching a Twitter exchange right now (will keep it nameless) where folks are trying to figure out who owns the twitter name for their company. I did a quick search on a number of well known companies by going to “http://www.twitter.com/companyname” only to find that many of the names have already been taken by others who obviously aren’t part of the organization who’s name they are using. Obviously this is reminiscent of the early days of the Internet when legal battles ensued over domain names.
I hope Twitter has staffed up its legal department to handle the probable actions by those seeking to reclaim their names.
Yeah, I’ve seen this a lot, like the BBC case, or one I just noticed, http://twitter.com/blackberry - doesn’t look very “RIM” like either, oh, and @RIM not there either. I’m sure there are tons like you mentioned.
Twitter does already have a policy, http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18370, but as with any policy, enforcement is key.
Irwin-
This sounds like a nice cottage industry. Not sure how Twitter can police this. They let people open accounts rather freely. That’s what makes it useful. Good post.!
Paul
Nice job, Irwin. I think you’ve correctly spotted an issue. Anyone own @business? Thinking back to when http://www.business.com sold for $7.5m. Oops, I checked. Someone has it!
Don