A View from the Isle

Remember when the web was young and we were all really trusting of usernames and IDs? I remember being on a woodworkers email list or news group and someone had the name/ID “Norm Abrams”. People were all excited to think they were getting email from Norm of New Yankee Workshop. Yeah, well it wasn’t him.

Things haven’t really changed have they? When someone has the ID “trishussey” you expect it to be me, right? The thing is that it isn’t always, especially where celebrities and brands are involved.

Gillian Shaw of the Vancouver Sun wrote a pretty telling piece this week about big companies–like major banks–not even aware of people using their name on Twitter.

Stiennon said already there has been a rush to claim all one- and two-letter Twitter IDs, similar to the early rush on dot-com names. A search of other Canadian banks on Twitter shows that @BMO leads to Twitter user Brian Moffatt.

At PricewaterhouseCoopers, global CIO Michael Calyniuk, said he is looking into a Twitter site with the ID PWC, which he isn’t aware of the company having.

“We are doing this from a security standpoint,” he said. “PWC is trademarked.”

The appearance of @scotiabank on Twitter has that bank trying to get the name — which appears complete with the bank’s logo — off the Twitter site.

“I personally wasn’t aware of it,” said Frank Switzer, director of public affairs at Scotiabank. “We’ll investigate and take the appropriate action.”

[From Web world’s all a-Twitter about seizing big corporate names]

Twitter is just one place you have to reserve your name. StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us … the list goes on. Have you made sure that your name isn’t taken by someone else?

I go and sign up for as many social media services almost right away not always to try them, but just to reserve my name space.

Are you check? Is your company check?

Yeah you might want to.

Like now.

Tweet This Post 

Tags: branding, identity, reputation management, Social Media, twitter, Web 2.0