Within the digital world, squatters are a fact of life.

There are thousands of great domains that have been parked by people who simply want to own a particular domain or people looking to make some money from selling them. On Twitter, there are usernames that have been snapped up by people with no intention of ever using them, even though there isn’t an official market to buy and sell them.

For companies, dealing with domain and username squatters is a fact of life as they establish their social media presence. It’s hard enough to get a URL, let alone navigate the fact someone else owns your username or brand name on Twitter and Facebook.

So what can brands do if they run across squatters or people who happen to have a good username for product or service? Here are a few tips:

1. For brand names, Facebook and Twitter are pretty good when it comes to protecting the right of companies who have a legitimate claim to a brand or trademark.

In many cases, you can approach Twitter or Facebook with a request for a username. The only challenge is it can take a lot of time for this request to be processed, particularly Twitter, which must be inundated with this kind of activity.

2. If a brand wants a username for a brand, service, project or campaign but it doesn’t have a legitimate claim, it comes down to approaching the person who owns the username to see if they are willing to sell it or hand it over. If someone responds to your request, it is then a matter of negotiating the term – much the way domain name deal are settled.

Another interested scenario is brands that discover that one of their customers have created an account on Twitter or Facebook with nothing but good intentions because they like the brand.

A customer of Tim Horton’s, for example, created a Facebook Page that had several hundred thousand users, and WestJet discovered that someone had created a vibrant Facebook Page before it decided to get serious about social media.

In these situations, the negotiations can be different because the owner of the username is often doing the right thing – evangelizing and promoting the brand – as opposed to squatting on it. It means that brands looking to acquire these usernames should need a gentle and positive approach rather than demanding they be handed over.

If done properly, the people who own these username are happy to hand them over for fair compensation if their efforts are recognized and celebrated. It could be a matter of producing them with free access to a product or service for a period of time, it could be financial, or it could be bringing them into the corporate fold rather as a way to harness their enthusiasm and experience.

Getting a desired username can be challenging or straightforward depending on the situation. Sometimes, you need to use a hammer, and somethings it’s just a matter of asking nicely.

Tags: Social Media, squatters, usernames

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 7:30 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.