Since the beginning of the Internet, a wild-west mentality has prevailed with people anonymously blasting articles and blogs with caustic comments. The authors and bloggers are stunned and left shaking their heads wondering about the anger and venom they’ve suffered.

For decades the Internet hasn’t held users accountable for reckless comments. But that may be changing in two ways. First, social networking sites, such as Facebook, are requiring participants to use their real names. In addition, lawsuits are also being filed against anonymous Internet users for slanderous comments or posting vital information about crimes.

Many would (and still do) argue that online anonymity will not fade away. Just imagine the sound of keyboards declaring that Internet users deserve their first amendment rights- FREEDOM OF SPEECH. So, the question is, does the first amendment cover a person who hides behind a false name only to harm others or add fuel to the fire? The answer is NO.

Consequences: It’s widely known that unruly or harsh comments associated with a person’s real persona could cost them a prospective job, clients and reputation. Hiding behind a fictitious name does not provide real protection, as digital fingerprints are easy to track.

Take for example the non-ethical behavior of companies who have asked their employees to provide glowing third party comments to impact stock price or sales. The courts have simply called this type of corporate behavior, fraud.

Here at Buzzphoria (www.buzzphoria.com), we respect the disclosure of identity standards from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, WOMMA, which requires members to disclose their relationships or identities with consumers when they may influence a customer’s buying-decision. Our rules of the worldwide-web begin with an introduction of who we are, the name of client we represent and our purpose for responding to the blog or article. That is just the way we do business.

Telling the truth –It’s not only the right thing to do- it takes courage. For example Activision Blizzard Inc., one of the world’s largest videogame companies, boldly set guidelines for users’ online posts.

The company placed a requirement that gamers list their real names to post messages in online forums, just in time for the change to be applied to its first forums of the company’s highly anticipated “StarCraft II,” which was released in late July.  The purpose of the policy was to deflate the sometimes-nasty discussions amongst gamers.

Sadly, the policy collapsed after a widespread backlash from game users. The service is based on paid-subscriptions, and the company was concerned a revolt from consumers could mean a drop in sales.

But what is to be said about online sites that are not held at the mercy of consumers’ demand? Are they more willing to allow users to post factitious names without being held accountable for any wrong doings? A growing number of legal decisions are making it easier for lawyers to use legal proceedings to have online users’ names disclose. A move that hints the guidelines for Internet postings may shift for safety reasons, and to control unruly and malicious users.

One infamous case, the Lori Drew MySpace trial, made international headlines as the court reviewed evidence that a St. Louis suburb mom established a fake online identity to bully her daughter’s rival, who eventually committed suicide. Although the court eventually threw out the case, the judge threatened to criminalize the act of creating a fake persona online. The publicity surrounding the case echoed through the Internet community.

For now, users still have the right to their online anonymity. But based on the string of legal cases and Internet company reactions, there may soon be a major change to Internet users rights. In the meantime, users should be careful about their content, and the possible damage it may cause.

The simplest rule to follow is- use your name and stand behind your words. Why would so many users fight this?

In our last posting, we talked about how we’ve made ourselves our own best case study by putting our own brand on the line to illustrate how we can help you protect yours.

As we discussed last time, there are unscrupulous individuals and groups who are hijacking brands for both sport and profit.  In our case, a hijacker registered and began impersonating the Buzzphoria brand on Twitter.

The first step in defending your company and brand when a hijacker hits it to verse yourself on your rights within terms of service for the social media platform or site in which your brand has been compromised.

Below is a screen shot from Twitter’s Terms of Service:

Twitter Terms of Service

Notice that the Terms of Service clearly state that:

1. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.
2. You may not use the Twitter.com service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. International users agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.
3. You must not, in the use of Twitter, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws).

Twitter General Conditions - Terms of Service

Please note the following:

1. We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Use.
2. We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Below, we’ve share the final section of Twitter’s Terms of Service - Copyright (What’s Yours is Yours):

Twitter Terms of Service - Copyright

Please note the following:

Twitter undertakes to obey all relevant copyright laws. We will review all claims of copyright infringement received and remove content deemed to have been posted or distributed in violation of any such laws. To make a claim, please provide us with the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or the person authorized to act on its behalf;
2. A description of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
3. A description of the infringing material and information reasonably sufficient to permit Twitter to locate the material;
4. Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and email;
5. A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under the pains and penalties of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

At the beginning of the .com boom, it was squatters grabbing brand names they felt were valuable and holding them for ransom to corporations.  In the past weeks and months, it was employees at a Dominoes who disparaged the brand by posting YouTube videos, causing the company to go into crisis communications mode.  It hasn’t just happened to Dominos:  with the rise of user generated content, comes the crush of corporations being impersonated and spoofed across user-generated mediums, creating more publicity nightmares, crisis communications situations and expensive legal battles.

Equally as deadly and dangerous to brands, are imposters who grab brand names within popular social media platforms such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, to name a few…

Thus, the Buzzphoria case study continues… We too were a victim of brand high-jacking and the retrieval process to gain our brand back.

Within Scott Allen’s original blog post about Buzzphoria, he essentially posed a call to action for someone to high-jack the Buzzphoria name and identity within multiple social media sites.  Someone took him up on it and immediately grabbed the Twitter identity @buzzphoria.  The individual(s) then took elements of artwork from the Buzzphoria website and set up a branded page, representing themselves as our brand.  From our tracking, we witnessed the individual(s) populating the page with tweets representing themselves as us, sent to the followers the culprit(s) had begun amassing.

When we spoke to Scott Allen, he told us that the culprit(s) had reached out to him and had let him know that they would give us our brand back…if we asked.

Unfortunately, most corporations don’t see that level of generosity and kindness (I’m being facetious here…).  No…brand high-jackers do not usually reach out to a blogger or journalist to say - “hey, if you do talk to that company let them know I’d be happy to hand them back their brand…”

So, what’s the journey for a corporation or brand to retrieve its identity?  (without an expensive and protracted legal battle?)

Our next few posts will show you step by step how we were able to retrieve our identity from Twitter.

It seems everywhere you go people are either talking or writing about Social Media.  Articles herald that Social Media is a must-have in any brand or company’s marketing mix.  Corporations are converting large segments of budget previously allocated to traditional marketing channels into social media marketing.  Many of these corporations and brands end up being disappointed or disillusioned with the results.

The reasons?  Lack of planning, entering into social media without understanding the mediums they’re leveraging and not identifying upfront the brand or company’s end game for engaging social media into the marketing mix.

When clients work with Buzzphoria, we feel the questions we ask are as critical as the planning of the campaign, the campaign implementation and our client’s end game results. 

Some questions you should ask yourself in the planning phases of your campaign:

Why are we doing this?  What do we hope to achieve?  How will we measure results both on and offline?  How will our social media activities enhance other activities within the client’s communications and marketing channels?