UPDATE: The page that contained the images below doesn’t seem to be active anymore.
I love Nerds – the candy, of course. My fondness for the stuff has encouraged me to start blogging again.
Over the past few days, I noticed on Facebook that one of their fan-made pages has taken a turn for the worse.
Because of social media, protecting a company or brand online has never been more difficult. Those who were enterprising enough to secure “common” domain names in the beginning are are probably resting on a beach somewhere. While securing a proper domain name is now a permanent staple on every company’s to-do list, chances are high that the most ideal social media handle is already owned by someone else. While Twitter has their own regulations against impersonation and trademark violations, there are no measures against cases where a handle was taken for the sake of convenience. As long as an entity adheres to the micro-blogging company’s rules, nothing can be done about it.
Then there are the user owned pages which I have posted above. When looking for a brand or company page on Facebook, the natural inclination is to go with the page with the most likes. Though I consider myself savvy enough to weed some of these pages out, I just fell for this one (it had more than a million likes after all). Some of the earlier posts were consistent with what someone would expect from a page of this nature.
Not all companies have the resources to maintain a social media account for each of their products or services. However, while some can survive without disseminating shareable content, mere ownership of an account prevents other entities from creating false images of your company.
Don’t you agree?