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Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

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Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#41

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

Really? This much surprise and outrage? I agree it sucks, but how can we all feign so much surprise at Facebook doing this? They've never pretended to be a good, or even neutral party.

Yeah, stupid that they claimed it was a TOS violation, but the whole "our system, our URLs" policy should be pretty clear to anyone who signs up. That's the gamble you take when you put down roots in someone else's system.

I just hope that it gives people pause before putting any marketing dollars behind their facebook vanity urls.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#42

Post by d0nk »

Reminds me of what my last isp did to me with email, to an extent. Every account got 5 email addresses. The default was the bill payer's first initial, last name. I had one of the secondary email addresses of my first initial, last name too. One day, someone with the same first initial and last name as me signed up, and they assigned him my address and removed my access. That was really frustrating since I had that as my primary email account at the time.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#44

Post by philh »

Tichy wrote: post #32
philh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But twitter.com/avtr is basically worthless for most people. Clearly noone deserves to earn millions just for registering /avtr. If they think it's worth less than promotional items, they're getting a good deal. There's no reason they couldn't hold out for more if they wanted, but they'd have to run the risk that at some point it wouldn't be worth buying. Further, /avtr is probably not much better than /avatar, /avat…

Don't know about the avtr case, but they also were offering junk to Mr Harman. So clearly they think somebody giving up their name is nothing.

If that's giving up his name, then all the other Harmans on facebook had their name stolen by this particular Harman.

A more accurate statement would be "clearly they think somebody not using one particular variant of their name as a facebook vanity URL is not a big deal". I would tend to agree.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#45

Post by fuzzmeister »

Tichy wrote: post #14

"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…

As an aside, what makes you call Coke Zero "poisonous"? I've never read anything that convinces me aspartame has significant negative health effects, in fact, "the most recent medical review on the subject concluded that 'the weight of existing scientific evidence indicates that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a non-nutritive sweetener.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#46

Post by radu_floricica »

Tichy wrote: post #14

"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…

Ok, why the poison? Maybe the owner simply wanted to do something cool. It's a better life for the domain to be used for the movie, more people will enjoy it and you get some toys and some bragging rights. It's an URL, not a wife. You can give it up simply if you want to be nice. You don't _have_ to, of course, and that's important, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't if you feel like it.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#47

Post by chrischen »

Tichy wrote: post #14

"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…

it's not like that facebook vanity url is making the millions.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#48

Post by Tichy »

fuzzmeister wrote: post #45
Tichy wrote: post #14

"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…

As an aside, what makes you call Coke Zero "poisonous"? I've never read anything that convinces me aspartame has significant negative health effects, in fact, "the most recent medical review on the subject concluded that 'the weight of existing scientific evidence indicates that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a non-nutritive sweetener.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame

I don't really have in depth knowledge of Aspartame. Sometimes you hear this, sometimes you hear that... In any case I can't think of any compelling reason for consuming it? All in all it seems more likely that it is poisonous than not - it certainly falls into the "heavily processed food" category, they have to add other chemicals to make it stable etc?

I know lots of people drink it every day - I admit "poisonous" puts it a bit provocatively.

Edit: just looked it on on Wikipedia, this seems to be the cited article: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/104084407015161... - That talks only about cancer and the nervous system, but not about obesity (for instance).

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#49

Post by bad_user »

radu_floricica wrote: post #46
Tichy wrote: post #14

"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…

Ok, why the poison? Maybe the owner simply wanted to do something cool. It's a better life for the domain to be used for the movie, more people will enjoy it and you get some toys and some bragging rights. It's an URL, not a wife. You can give it up simply if you want to be nice. You don't _have_ to, of course, and that's important, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't if you feel like it.

Shit, I upvoted you by mistake ... now I have to give a response.

> Ok, why the poison? Maybe the owner simply wanted to do something cool.

So doing something cool means intruding on other people's rights? The threshold must be getting really low these days.

Really, people should start paying attention to the online world, and what does "property" mean in such a context.

And if your online presence on a social network is so fragile (since, after all, Facebook is a business and the users don't really have lots of implicit rights) ... than there should be national campaigns against it (after all, your online profile being mismanaged could cause some people more harm than smoking, so why the discrimination?) ... not to mention that people think of Facebook as a "common carrier" which couldn't be further from the truth.

Isn't it easier to just play nice and stop acting like a douche bag?

> It's an URL, not a wife.

It isn't just any URL, it's the link to your online profile. Your friends might have you bookmarked, Google might have you indexed by that URL.

It's like saying domain names like "sex.com" aren't worth anything. Well they do.

Re: Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International

#50

Post by Tichy »

philh wrote: post #44
Tichy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about the avtr case, but they also were offering junk to Mr Harman. So clearly they think somebody giving up their name is nothing.

If that's giving up his name, then all the other Harmans on facebook had their name stolen by this particular Harman. A more accurate statement would be "clearly they think somebody not using one particular variant of their name as a facebook vanity URL is not a big deal". I would tend to agree.

The other Harmans didn't have their name stolen - they were simply too late.

If somebody not using a particular vanity URL is not a big deal, then why does Harman Inc need the URL anyway? Why don't they just go for /harmanInc or something like that?

I am also not saying that it is that much of a big deal - not like they are supposed to odder millions. But to just offer worthless junk is offensive.

Also I think "he needs it more than you, so it should belong to him" is not a good basis for conducting business.

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