Facebook snatches User's URL, Sells it to Harman International

14 years ago

How embarrassing for facebook that Harman International actually contacted the former owner of the profile. If that had not happened, it probably would never have come out that they snatched the name to sell it to Harman International.

Ralf

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GeorgR.

14 years ago

They contacted him and wanted to give him some stickers and posters in exchange for the URL. Makes me sick...all those are multi billion dollar companies...

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Gary King

14 years ago

So, facebook, twitter, etc. are struggling to find a business model they can profit from - looks like they found it, eh?

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Mohsin Rasool

14 years ago

Not a good move by FB team!

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Lou Diamond

14 years ago

Hello,
this will be happening a lot more as time goes on,it is just another example
of who owns the ball makes the rules.
Lou

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Something new soon.

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simbat

14 years ago

FB, What is this "real name " they asking for ??

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Tomwood

14 years ago

What FB have done is defiantly wrong but if you read the WP article to the end you will find the silver lining.
It looks like Harman many get some free publicity for his new start up venture from the WP

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Emmanuel ED

14 years ago

Wow, I hope this does not extend to twitter....

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2d0k

14 years ago

The corporate world just keeps getting uglier..

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Kay King 14 years ago

From facebook's site?

Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason.

Moral is - if someone wants your facebook name - you might want to negotiate with them before facebook decides for you.
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- Martin Luxton 14 years ago
  
  When you think about it, very little belongs to you online.
  
  You can lose your domain name, hosting and accounts like Paypal/merchant, Blogger, Adwords, Adsense, Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook etc just like that with nary a word of explanation.
  
  Eggs and baskets anyone?
  
  Martin
  
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Heidi White 14 years ago

Originally Posted by 2d0k

The corporate world just keeps getting uglier..

and more influential (see this weeks Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited campaign contributions from Corporations and other 'entities') :rolleyes:
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R Hagel

14 years ago

The Washington Post uses the word "snatches" to push an emotional button in its readers. And yeah, it was kind of lame that FB took it. But as Kay pointed out, they have the right to take it.

I think FB is one of those sites where users start to feel like it's "theirs" just because they use it so much. They forget that it's privately owned... that it's a business, not community property, not a democracy. And so the owners can do as they please (especially in a case like this, where their TOS works to cover their behinds).

Of course the owners also realize that stuff like this raises eyebrows, so I'm sure they'll take it into consideration when a similar situation arises.

On the plus side...

Harmon didn't mind. And I'm sure he'll profit from the publicity (as he already hinted at a business venture).

Cheers,
Becky

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1 reply

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Dan C. Rinnert

14 years ago

Originally Posted by R Hagel

The Washington Post uses the word "snatches" to push an emotional button in its readers. And yeah, it was kind of lame that FB took it. But as Kay pointed out, they have the right to take it.

I think FB is one of those sites where users start to feel like it's "theirs" just because they use it so much. They forget that it's privately owned... that it's a business, not community property, not a democracy. And so the owners can do as they please (especially in a case like this, where their TOS works to cover their behinds).

Of course the owners also realize that stuff like this raises eyebrows, so I'm sure they'll take it into consideration when a similar situation arises.

One would hope they take it into consideration and that they realize such actions, while they may have the legal right, may not sit well in the court of public opinion.

It would be hard to encourage people to use your service if you become known as a site that will grab your username to sell it off to the highest bidder. Some people print their contact information on business cards, letterhead, etc. It can be expensive to replace all that stuff. Yet, you want to have customers or prospects be able to contact you through multiple means these days. Even if you don't have the address printed on anything, you still may have it listed on your website, forum signatures, other SN profiles and so on. Can be a real pain to change all that.

So, rather than risk things with a company with a reputation for grabbing usernames, stick with those that aren't know to do that.

That's the risk that Facebook takes here with such an action. They've subsequently returned the name to the original owner. But, the bottom line is that they shouldn't have done it to begin with.

Now, if someone had been using something like "Microsoft" as their vanity URL, okay, that makes sense. But, to take away a guy's first name? Unless he was using it in such a manner that infringed upon the trademark owner, there's really no valid excuse for it.

Facebook really screwed up here. When you are trying to popularize a service, this is not the way to do it. It just gets people and businesses thinking twice about whether they want to join.

We all have rights that are sometimes best not exercised.

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Cornerstone 14 years ago

In th end the court of public opinon will triumph. When companies make bone head mistakes like this they usually get hit hard with complaints and bad pr

Eventually it gets worked out (when thier pocket book is affected)
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sbucciarel

Banned 14 years ago

From Techcrunch:

"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Mike. We made a mistake in this instance and are in the process of returning the username to Mr. Bajwa. To be clear, the move was not driven by monetary reasons, rather trademark protection. We strive to protect trademarks from 'squatters' -- those who try to take protected terms with no legitimate claim. The message Harman received was along those lines, but clearly not applicable. Once we understood the nature of our error, we moved quickly to resolve it. We want to apologize to Mr. Bajwa for being overzealous in our efforts and regret the disruption to his account."

Apparently, they're a bit embarrassed about being called out on this and wrongly accusing someone of TOS violations, when in fact, they just wanted to profit from it.

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digigo

14 years ago

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

From Techcrunch:

"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Mike. We made a mistake in this instance and are in the process of returning the username to Mr. Bajwa. To be clear, the move was not driven by monetary reasons, rather trademark protection. We strive to protect trademarks from 'squatters' -- those who try to take protected terms with no legitimate claim. The message Harman received was along those lines, but clearly not applicable. Once we understood the nature of our error, we moved quickly to resolve it. We want to apologize to Mr. Bajwa for being overzealous in our efforts and regret the disruption to his account."

Apparently, they're a bit embarrassed about being called out on this and wrongly accusing someone of TOS violations, when in fact, they just wanted to profit from it.

That's what I thought it may have happened.. same with apple grabbed a bunch of TLD domains.. here it is the case of account name... FB is not likely being bribed for a few bucks for this action... FB just tried to cover their own ass... it is the right move to rectify it

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thescribe

14 years ago

Yes, I noticed that they decided to give it back, but the whole business is still a bit distasteful...

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Gary McCaffrey

14 years ago

Was about to say that /harman does lead to a personal account. I see they returned it to him.

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GeorgR.

14 years ago

yes, it made it rounds big time on twitter yesterday, that's where i (excuse the pun) snatched it from

This was a trending topic for a while.

On a side-note...this also has a lesson or two in it in regards to marketing!

1) EMOTIONS will draw lots of attention. This story would not have drawn so many retweets and reposts if it wouldnt have that emotional "kick" to it. Extremely important for successful marketing and driving traffic.

2) "Reputation Management" <-- this is a fairly new branch related to SEO which is solely dedicated to play down and "correct" bad reputation a company/person etc. could get via social and web2.0 media.

Interesting stuff here from an IM perspective...

I am glad he got the URL back

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Facebook snatches User's URL, Sells it to Harman International

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