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On Twitter and Trademarks: Businesses Should Beware

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If you're remotely geeky and into technology, chances are you've heard of Twitter already. 

If you think Twitter is a waste of time (and not the most wonderful thing since Facebook status updates) and as a result don't have a Twitter account, I still have one piece of advice if you're a business (or have a trademark).

Stop what you're doing right now and go create a free Twitter account.  When you do so, make your Twitter account name your primary brand name.

For example, for my startup blog OnStartups, I've got onstartups as my Twitter name.  I've also "reserved" the HubSpot brand as well, even though we're not using it yet.

This is free, takes only 30 seconds, and you may be thankful someday you did.  If not, no big deal, you wasted 30 seconds.

Why?  Because there's nothing stopping someone from grabbing your company name (even if you have it trademarked), and it's near impossible right now to do anything about it if they do.  Sure, you have the legal rights to your company name, if it's trademarked, but if I were you, I'd rather just grab it for free in 30 seconds in case you change your mind in a few months and decide Twitter is important to you after all.

 

Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Sun, May 04, 2008 @ 03:14 PM

COMMENTS

Great suggestion. I already use Twitter so I would highly recommend following the articles advise. It is free, even if you don't use it, get it now while you can.

posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 3:49 PM by Scott Fillmer


You're quite right - I have four Twitter accounts now just for this reason:
1) Me http://twitter.com/andymurd
2) My brand name - unused for now
3) My in-development twitter application
4) A brand whose name I registered for a friend. He can have it as soon as he wakes up to twitter as a marketing tool
I hope that the twitter start releasing accounts it considers "dormant".

posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 3:55 PM by andymurd


I'm still not a believer in Twitter as a viable business tool, except in very limited applications, but I took your advice and locked up the agency name. Thanks.

posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 5:09 PM by Paul Roetzer


Absolutely, couldn't agree more.

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 6:33 AM by Slate


For those that are naysayers, they should check it out. I connected with two people this week that were prospects who I would have probably had to leave several vmails for - If I wanted to connect the old fashion way.
As soon as I connected to them on Twitter, we moved to the phone and how I might be able to help them. But, many people are using Twitter to meet new people, find resources for problems they're trying to solve, hire talent, find stories for their blog, etc. Twitter creates an opportunity to meet people on their turf.
In the last week, I helped Allen from CenterNetworks with a technical issue he was having. I also suggested to Guy Kawasaki that add the HubSpot blog to his alltop aggregator and he did. Why? Because they were asking for help.
Would you really be able to connect with these people by phone or email?

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 6:38 AM by peter caputa


Naysayers: Posting to twitter takes two seconds (sometimes three). If any of your customers/users are using it you should be too. It's a great networking tool and is so quick and easy to use that you can't afford not to spend a few seconds on it per day.

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 9:52 AM by todd g


Great advice. Just snapped up a group of acct names relevant to my line of work.

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 11:49 AM by PDB


Good point Dharmesh, I already have 3 accounts on Twitter. The official name is what am I using now, and two more not in use yet.
I´ve been follow Mike Volpe on Twitter. I will looking foraward following you as well.
Best Regards

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 12:26 PM by Federico Muñoa


Will we be kicking ourselves when twitter.com/beer or twitter.com/newyork sell for Millions on eBay?

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 12:57 PM by peter caputa


Good advice. I'd even suggest taking it a step farther and going ahead and setting up your RSS feed through <a href="http://twitterfeed.com/">twitterfeed.com</a>.
Tack on an additional minute to that Twitter sign-up time and at least you have something regularly posting to the twitter account even if your not actively doing it.

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 4:04 PM by Kyle James


Great suggestion, Kyle. I receive a trickly of traffic to my blog from Twitter because I autopost links to my latest blog posts on Twitter.

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 9:38 AM by peter caputa


The same should be said for many other sites, too... like YouTube and more. Perhaps it would be beneficial to create a list of all the sites one should go out and "brand" for themselves.

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 11:20 AM by elRhino


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