Consider the case of David Lloyd who registered his nickname ’squaresheep’ on Facebook, the nickname he says he has been known by for over 10 years and used on other services like Hotmail and Skype.com
However last weekend, Facebook notified him that his username had been revoked and awarded to a cooking website of the same name, which had been established for only one year.
Facebook told Lloyd that the vanity URL had been taken away from him because it violated its terms and conditions.
Facebook did not give Lloyd any prior notice that his user name was going to be taken away.
Most importantly Mr. Lloyd did not get any opportunity to contest the ruling or present any argument to keep the user name.
A representative for Facebook explained that the use of ‘squaresheep’ by Lloyd violated its terms of service because the name had no relation to Lloyd’s real name, however many facebook user id’s “have no relationship” to the person’s actual name.
Facebook didn’t say whether it had acted in response to a complaint from squaresheep.com, the cooking site, which they handed the user id over to.
Mr. Lloyd said:
“As far as I could tell, there appeared to be no way to question or appeal the decision by Facebook to give ownership to squaresheep.com. As I have had the squaresheep moniker (although never a website) for a decade I believe that it has “a clear connection to my identity” and I am not setting out to impersonate or denigrate squaresheep.com in any way (before the weekend, I had no idea they existed). I just think that Facebook (and possibly squaresheep.com) have been a little heavy-handed and uncommunicative.”
Lloyd went on to say:
“It is rather ironic that Facebook have stopped me from using squaresheep when I had to choose a name like that in the first place because my real name, David Lloyd, is not only shared with thousands of other people but is also a trademark of David Lloyd Leisure Ltd.””
If you thought the laws around domains were tough, Facebook’s rules on account names look tougher, unilateral with no right of appeal.
They’ve just erased the value of their vanity URLs as an investment and platform to build a business on.
Agree John…if they do this enough times it will be suicide. No one will put in the effort to develop themselves as a brand on facebook if the threat is there. The nail in the coffin will be when, not if facebook sells to a public company or goes public themselves.
Facebook’s policy strongly favors trademark holders, rightly or wrongly. All vanity URLs I’ve seen reassigned have been given to companies/organizations to build their Facebook “Page.” There is a simple form to fill out which requires a valid trademark registration number and if on review Facebook in it’s sole discretion determines the claim to be valid the vanity URL may be reassigned. I would hope that if multiple parties have a valid trademark claim the URL will be assigned on a first come first serve basis.
Here’s a link to show how simple and cheap it is to file a trademark claim.
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_infringement
If you put your fate in the hands of others, your are destined to be disappointed (screwed).
Warning, vanity usernames at social networking websites are risky business, you stand to lose your IP in a whim and the content is there for the social network to maximize advertising down the line. Try and build social network apps into your existing website vis a vis marketing your business through vanity url’s.
And I taught halvarez deserved the turkey award of 2009. For me Facebook did. Sucks.
Who didn’t see this coming?
Has anyone twittered, or blogged yet about Facebook’s unilateral action absent any opportunity to protest, etc…assuming the circumstances are as stated above?
If not, why not? – why not expose this arbitrary action to the ‘sunlight’ as Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes remarked “sunlight is the best disinfectant’ in such situations.
CyberActivist
Who thought they “owned” anything on facebook anyway ?
As I said many many times, do not trust all these social sites, all they care is CONTROL.
facebook aka faces-hit
Still see many stupid stupid people using blogspot or those free hosting to post their content…ha ha ha…
With all due respect to David Lloyd, and no props to Facebook, did everyone miss the obvious on this article and the problem in the first place?
David admits to using “squaresheep” for a decade. That’s a long time to promote your personal/company name without BUYING THE DOMAIN NAME. What would have been the outcome in this issue if David had thought to go buy the domain name, since he used it so much? What would FB have done if some company with some bastardized version of “squaresheep.com” tried to hijack his FB name?
“Hi, we’re Square-Sheep-Inc.” and we want the FB profile name “squaresheep.”
FB would say, “Well, we have a guy here who owns the domain “squaresheep.com” and is using the profile name already. Sorry.”
Or am I wrong on this?
If I’m not wrong, this is an excellent lesson for ALL businesses to own their domain names at every level, especially at the .com versions.
Agree with Stephen Douglas_Successclick.com. This is the best comment here. It costs less than $10 an year to maintain a domain name and you don’t even need to buy hosting service. Just redirect your domain to the page at the social network or blogging platform.
decisions like this make me wanna puke… FB should give the the guy an opportunity to present his side for fairness sake..
I as well suffered this fate, I have gone by and used the nickname ptbarnum for at least 10 years, and 2 days ago when I logged into facebook, I found that they had reassigned it and I was forced to chose a new username. It doesn’t matter that I have the same username on twitter, on myspace and have used the name as the basis for my online identity.
Facebook, I really did not anticipate this, but since its here welcome to social networking 2.0 and all the press it can bring, good or bad!
Facebook is different from other sites like MySpace. That’s why they are number one! They want online identities that people can’t hide behind. My understanding is they don’t allow usernames like “shoes” or “pizza” either.
I want to stick up for Facebook. They are running a great website.
Wait what? This doesn’t even make sense, if a person has been using the same handle for a decade how is this “hiding” – I know some people whose online handles are well known enough that people online will figure who the person is on seeing their handle, and if I want anonimity I know not to use the handle I used to sign here.
I agree with John
FB Terms and Conditions violate people’s rights. They act as though they are gods and will do anything to your account without allowing the user any rights to defend. Anything that brings money to them, they will unethically enforce their terms and conditions. I think their application of their terms and conditions are unethical and unlawful. I wouldn’t use facebook to promote any business as their stuck up P$@%KS.