News Bits: Major Brands Struggle to Take Back Twitter Accounts

Written by Erin Barker

Monday, November 9. 2009 at 09:50 AM EST Post a comment

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Surprisingly few of the top 100 national advertisers own the Twitter accounts named for their companies, putting brands in jeopardy and spelling possible legal trouble for the microblogging site, Ad Age reports.

One of these advertisers is Hyundai, which is now contemplating a lawsuit against Twitter Inc. , after getting fed up with the process to take back its brand name -- currently tied to this Twitter account instructing visitors to "Have a Lusty Day."

"They simply haven't responded to requests," Chris Hosford, Hyundai's VP of corporate communications, told Ad Age. "Our brand name is extremely important to us... We're very disappointed that Twitter has shown no interest in protecting brand names."

Companies like Wal-Mart, General Motors, General Electric, Comcast, Eli Lilly, Kellogg, MasterCard, Nestle, and Walt Disney have suffered similar fates on the microblogging site. Part of the problem may be that marketers haven't yet been let in on Twitter's "Verified Account" program, though supposedly a "Twitter Pro" service for companies is coming soon.

Twitter's head of commercial products, Anamitra Banerji, had this to say to Ad Age: "We understand brands' frustration when it comes to account verification. We are working on ways to make the process easier and faster... Given the volume of requests we receive, sometimes it might take a little while to close requests but we are trying to improve that too."

Some companies have had more luck than Hyundai. Home Depot was able wrangle @homedepot back from a squatter, with Twitter's help, though it took a full year.

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