Time-Sensitive News for Business Facebook Users

Submitted by augustash on June 12, 2009

Effective 11 PM CST on June 12th (tonight), Facebook will be allowing members the option of creating customized usernames for their profiles.  These usernames will be incorporated as part of their profile's URL (ie: facebook.com/company name).  The relevance and urgency of this news for business owners is twofold:

  1. This means you'll now be able to incorporate your company/organization name into your Facebook URL, which is good news for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include search engine marketing.
  2. This also calls for a certain degree of diligence in protecting your company name.  After all, what's stopping your competitor from registering your company's name?

Well, before your imagination starts conjuring images of wild-eyed homesteaders racing across America's untamed West in the 1890s land runs, take comfort in the fact that no username registration will necessarily be considered irreversible.

What you can do now

You can preemptively block anyone else from using your own registered trademark by filling out this online form at Facebook.  By submitting the form and providing Facebook with your unique trademark registration number, you can keep anyone else from using your trademarked name.

Our recommendation would be to submit this form now, and not stress too much about being first in line tonight.

What you can do later

If you don't find out about all this until next month and some cyber squatter on the other side of the map has claimed your company's trademark as their own, Facebook already has an appeals process in place.  By submitting Facebook
Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim) form, you'll be able to open a dialogue with Facebook to prove your case.  While this process is yet to be laid out in detail, trademark owners should be consoled by the option to contest wrongful use of their intellectual property.

As a general reminder, be sure to submit either of these forms under a primary email address that you will be accessing for a very long time.  As with any important account creation, it's best to tie it in with an address that gets checked frequently.

If you have questions or concerns about this news that aren't addressed on Facebook's username help center, contact us, and we'll help determine how this may affect you.

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