Carmakers Hit Twitter Squatters

From Automotive News, via Nick Chambers at Gas 2.0: automakers don’t appreciate it when their names are turned into Twitter accounts that have nothing to do with their brands. Evidently, Twitter has been overwhelmed and slow to deal with carmakers’ complaints.

Of course, as Chambers points out, maybe carmakers are overly concerned about the ur-brand and not grasping how Twitter really works: as a highly focused, micro-broadcasting outlet. For example, if @volkswagen or @generalmotors isn’t obviously doing anything VW or GM related, Twitter users will figure that out pretty fast. However, if VW or GM wants to set up a Twitter feed to promote or market a new car, they can do that pretty easily. Given the way that Twitter works, people will figure out how to find the feed, especially since Twitter forces users to decipher some convoluted lingo- and posting-protocols.

Hyundai has had a different problem. @hyundai became a suspended account, due to bad behavior. It’s not clear whether Hyundai can now take control of that account, as Twitter seems to have forbidden the development of a username market as part of its terms of service (it also forbids outright impersonation, and presumably that extends to established business names). Hyundai would probably want to. But would it be worth it? What works best on Twitter isn’t the mega, but the micro.