Twitter Squatting? It’s So Yesterday..

I think we already too late to talk about Twitter squatting.  This issue had been brought to our attention as early as last year.  Even at Social Browse, we have this guy using Mark Zuckerberg, and still politely remain his follower, “There’ s a chance I’m not the Facebook Founder” or did he?

If domain names and Twitter squatting is a yesterday issue, so what now?

Social media had become a big attention lately.  People talk about social media from their ROI, actual value of social media traffic and to the latest business buzz.

I think with more than 145 social media sites (including social media and social bookmarking) and expected spending on social media advertising – who wouldn’t be not interested to talk about it.

When Network World talk about how Twitter username become a new supply of valuables name,  I think we just see the tip of the iceberg.

If Network World cited the example of Renata McGriff, I would like to cite the Saville vs The Estate of C.S. Lewis and WIPO on Narnia.mobi, in which the use of Narnia infrienge the trade mark own by C.S. Lewis.

If the supplies of dot.com, dot.net, dot.org already used up, ICANN will always introduced new extension.  But when your username already being used up, you might be able to get it at other social media sites.  So does other peoples.  Therefore, another Bill Clinton or hamdaniamin can appear everywhere.

What make it so valuable?

The Twitter account name shows up in the path of the URL and is not available after it’s created. Thus, the Twitter account for James Bond is http://twitter.com/jamesbond.   Most of social media sites work along this convention.

Like Steve Poland, as Twitter is getting more popular by the minute, I wonder who would makes the first Twitter username sale.

Why it become a big issue?

One should also add as social media getting popular by the days, what stopping other people to pretend as if the feed come from you or your company’s?

How about trademark issue?  Can you keep up with the ever growing new social media sites?

So now, we had entered into new type of cyberspace squatting, known as social media squatting at more specific level but will be known as username cyber squatting at the macro level.

How should we address this issue?

Maybe it’s time to evaluate single user id across the web. The OpenId concept proved to be useful and important as web users have the ability to register once but can be used everywhere anywhere on the net.

Can we detain anyone to start a new social media sites, event to use our username as theirs?  Obviously not.  Both username owner, site operator and the peoples need to exercise due care when registering a username.

Will blog remain non-exclusive?

I think not.  As long as we allowed people to comment at our blog, we will facing similar issue.  I once received a comment from George Bush (of course, not the real George Bush) I just delete.  Why? Because it’s make my blog look stupid.

On my final thought, which I don’t expect you to agree,  I think Twitter or other social media sites should make some money out of this by reserving these generic keywords ahead of time.

What do you think?  Should social media sites do that? At the very least, they can curb social media squatting.

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