Why Fight the Internet Turf War?

One of my favorite news sources, nytimes.com, just ran a story about online identity: Keeping True Identity Becomes a Battle Online.

The article suggests that both individuals and companies are struggling to defend their intellectual property and branding on fast-growing, trendy internet sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Celebrity interviewees and corporations complain that site users are registering their personal or trademarked names as usernames. It seems that we're back to the cyber-squatting of the 1990s. Cyber-squatting got media attention back then, but the battles were largely resolved in intellectual property lawsuits. Courts decided that just because you registered "McDonalds.com" first didn't mean that you were its rightful owner. It turns out that 1 billion served trumps first-served.

So what's different today? Back then, domain names were treated like a public good and became de facto regulated by courts. Today, web services like Facebook and Twitter do not regard their services as a public good. Nor should they: these are privately-owned, for-profit companies. This is why Facebook allows any individual to register their username as a URL (i.e. facebook.com/davetrendler) but requires brands to have at least 1,000 friends before allowing a custom URL (i.e. facebook.com/cocacola).

According to the Times article, "To some, the rules of this new game are frustratingly hazy. Facebook has invited trademark holders and celebrities who find their names are taken to fill out a complaint form on the site. It says it will resolve disputes on a case-by-case basis.".

Riiight. A complaint form: that sounds promising. If you're familiar with Facebook's track record, you know that the company is scarily self-centered and fanatically ambitious.

So unless you've got the resources to devote a staff member to staking your claim in every new web service (Ning.com, Tumblr.com, Friendfeed.com), what's a person, brand, or person/brand to do?

1. Be your own cyber-squatter: suck it up and register your username on all the trendy new sites. Registration for most web services these days takes about 60 seconds.
2. Hire a marketing firm to manage your online brand. If you're big enough to fear a cyber-squatter, you're big enough to hire someone to register usernames for you.
   
3. Create a good website you control. Sure, Facebook, Wordpress, and Twitter can compensate for a sucky website, but a decent website is fairly inexpensive these days. If you aren't willing to mash up enough free web services to cobble together a functional, interactive website, drop a few hours or a few grand on a website that runs itself and doesn't suck.
4. Some brands lose relevance on web services. The web is becoming increasingly personal and niche. Some consumers are happy to poke their Facebook friends with Starbucks Frappucinos, but most people sign up for web services for more personal reasons. Brands should parse content into pieces appropriate to the media. For example, instead of tweeting as "@espn", tweet as "@espnhockey". Niche-ify your brand, especially if you're a niche brand!
   
5. Usernames are disposable. So you were late to the party and didn't snag "@pepsi". Who wants to follow Pepsi on Twitter? How is "@pepsi" useful on a micro-blogging site? Use web services to meet a specific goal, like "@trypepsifree" or "@pepsiandmentos". Build a campaign around the quirks of a web service, like Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice.
   
6. Don't sweat over a flash in the pan. Web services are notoriously short-lived. Who spends time on MySpace anymore? Or Second Life? Private equity investors love to talk about "hockey stick growth", when user registrations suddenly skyrocket, but how many web services take a nosedive six months later? Brands are better served focusing on longer-term branding, like a decent website and a solid online advertising plan.