Yesterday, Kamehameha Schools had a problem on Twitter. It wasn’t that they have only a couple dozen followers. Nor was it with the infamous Fail Whale. Instead, it was with the unauthorized use of their logo by someone claiming to be them and sending offensive or embarrassing Tweets:
- We will give you 7 million dollars if you sue.
- As Pauahi’s will clearly states: “Fu** da haoles.” Expletive bleeped by me; the original Tweet has the actual word there.
To make it abundantly clear, for official Kamehameha Schools news announcements, follow @KSNews on Twitter. I can vouch for them, I know people who work there. And, I am not going to even mention the impostor’s username and send more traffic their way. That’s just encouraging their incorrigible behavior. The worst part about this mess is that in my opinion, it is either a student or someone with close ties to Kamehameha who knows what’s going on at the Kapalama campus. Exercising one’s First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech is one thing, but something as irresponsible as this is a different story. And I come down hard on them for the offensive nature of this infraction.
This is not the first time something like this has happened in Hawaii. Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, while she was Lt. Governor, was a victim of cyber-squatting. Someone else had registered maziehirono.com. We’ve since made it illegal to do that in Hawaii. What these people are doing is not the same as local blogger Ryan Ozawa (@hawaii on Twitter) who doesn’t bring harm or damage someone’s reputation by taking a name that might be mistaken for somehting else. By the way, he’s a wonderful online ambassador of the great things, both tech-related and non, going on in Hawaii. I’m sure there are many more cases like that regarding domain names, but this same kind of abuse on Twitter is probably indicative of its growing popularity.
While I’m not sure it’s illegal to register someone else’s name on Twitter, I’m sure Kamehameha lawyers will be sending cease and desist orders for trademark infringement.
To protect yourself and your brand, or that of your company or organization, it takes being proactive (the first habit) and having persistence. You probably want to start with the most popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (my personal favorite). Visit these sites and check if anyone else has already registered your name. If you have a common name like John Smith, that might be easy to do. If you’re like me, your name should be available. Then, create an account and register your name.
Here’s where the tricky part comes in, especially on Twitter: you should try to register names that are similar to yours. Back in the day, making the mistake of going to whitehouse.com (instead of .gov) brought a little embarrassment when it went to a porn site. True story! But what I’m talking about here are usernames that are just a letter off from your correct name. Many people register their full names, like @sidsavara, so that makes it easy to know who that person is.
On Twitter, I’m @exbor, a tribute to my old username at WordPress.com. But you all know my real name is Capsun, so I’ve also registered @capsun. Honestly, I’ve registered most of the variations of my name – at least the ones that are likely to be mistaken as me. So I have: @xbor, @exbo, @capsunpoe, @cpoe, and many more. I consider that good brand protection. If you check any of those out, they all direct you to follow my real account, @exbor. So even if someone were able to register one Twitter account that could be me, it is highly unlikely that someone would mistake that account for me.
If you’re in marketing, communications, or public relations in your organization, I highly recommend you do this to protect yourself from being victimized as Kamehameha has been. Until, of course, we pass a law making it illegal for people to maliciously take a name that could conceivably be confused with the real owner of a name, trade name, or trademark.
Do any of you already do something similar to this?
Mahalo!
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. While I am employed by and affiliated with organizations and individuals, permission has neither been asked nor granted to write on the topics discussed here.
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