Weber Shandwick Social Studies Blog

I was just reading this post from Jeremiah Owyang about monitoring and “managing” brands online. In it, he introduced me to a tool that can make you a hero with just a few quick strokes: user name check. The site is incredibly simple, and allows you to search for the availability of a particular user name across all of the popular social networking sites (and a bunch I’ve never heard of) in seconds.

Why is this valuable? Because of the rampant “brandjacking” that has resurfaced with the emergence of popular social networking tools like YouTube and Twitter. People are registering big brand name user names on social networking sites like they were buying up URLs in the mid-90s (does anyone else remember the mid-90s?). Whether these individuals are hoping for a big 90s-style payout, or if they have more mischievious/destructive intentions (see Shel Holz’s account of the ExxonMobil brandjacking incident on Twitter) making sure your name, or your company’s name, is registered now could save a great deal of headache and expense down the road.