Name squatting the Fortune 50 companies on Twitter

The companies of the Fortune 500 generate the greatest revenues worldwide, and undoubtedly require a lot of manpower to sustain their day-to-day operations. Due to their size and complexity, these big companies are often slow to enter social media spaces like Twitter. Who should be the voice of the company? What about legal? Don’t we have bigger fish to fry?

By the time some of these giants decide to join the conversation, they may find their trademarked, and extremely recognizable names have been taken, name squatted out from under them, and Twitter, constantly bogged down by its growing infrastructure, is often unable or slow to respond to trademark issues.

In searching for Twitter accounts for the top 50 Fortune companies (via Google), some interesting facts are discovered:

• 33 of the Fortune 50 companies appear to have an official Twitter presence. Those that don’t are mostly oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Valero Energy, Marathon Oil, Sunoco) and health care companies (Cardinal Health, CVS Caremark, UnitedHealth, AmerisourceBergen, WellPoint).
• The majority of the Fortune 50 companies (37), whether on Twitter or not, appear to have at least one of their trademarked/ideal names squatted as a username. Some of these names may be squatted by the company itself, but considering most of these companies are on Twitter and not using these usernames, it’s more likely that a third, unauthorized party has taken hold of the powerful username.
• The Fortune 50 companies on Twitter average relatively low numbers of followers. Their primary accounts combined (about 1.3 million followers) garner as much interest as @ICHCheezburger, or about a third as much as @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher). Their popularity is skewed though, by @DellOutlet, which accounts for about 1.2 million of those followers. Removing Dell, the remaining 32 companies average about 4,000 followers each (at the time of this writing).

After the jump is a full list of the Fortune 50 companies with squatted usernames.

Fortune 50 victims of Twitter name squatting

(The Fortune list is ordered by revenue, not profit (often significantly less). The Twitter accounts listed for each company are what appear to be name squatted or official, and do not represent the only accounts that exist.)

While most of these “name squatted” accounts are devoid of content (like @Walmart) or protected (like @exxonmobil), some attempt to impersonate a brand (@pfizer) or act as unofficial/fan Twitterers (@costco_online).

These companies had enough foresight/luck to acquire their brand names (whether they use it or not): @ConocoPhillips, @Ford, @hp, @Verizon, @HomeDepot, @Microsoft, @Walgreens, @WellsFargo, @CaterpillarInc (of course “caterpillar” is taken!), @Medco, and @Lowes.

@ValeroEnergy, @UPS, @GoldmanSachs were squatted at one point, and are now suspended(^s) by Twitter. Perhaps they’re on the road to corporate recovery.

Too bad @BerkshireHathaway, @AmerisourceBergen, @ArcherDanielsMidland, and @UnitedTechnologies are all too long to be Twitter usernames! (The limit is 15 characters.)

Some brand names aren’t necessarily squatted, but because they’re ordinary, have already been taken by individuals. @JPMorgan is Josh Morgan, and @caterpillar, is well, an insect.

To be clear, name squatting by a company or an individual is a violation of The Twitter Rules, which prohibit six months of inactivity, “creating accounts for the purpose of preventing others from using those account names” or “for the purpose of selling those accounts.” Twitter takes action on behalf of trademark holders against name squatters, albeit slowly, which may be the story behind @HomeDepot (who recently migrated from @TheHomeDepot) and the suspended accounts mentioned above.

While @DellOutlet commands the Fortune 50 Twitterers with about 1.2 million followers, Dell also operates 34 other Twitter accounts.

Here is the message for big business: If you lost your ideal username to a 12-year-old in Prague, realize you’re in good company. Name squatting is an affliction of the well known - celebrities and corporations - and plagues every social media space. You can let Twitter know about it, but if you wait for their help, you’ll have already missed the conversation. Just try to choose a creative username without_too_many_underscores.

UPDATE (11/4/09): Asterisked (*) accounts may have been recovered, because, as of this update, they are no longer name squatted.

Posted in Micro-blogging |
Tagged with Fortune 500, name squatting, Twitter