Who Owns Your Social Media Accounts?

December 19th, 2008 by Nick Gonzalez

I remember when I got my first cell phone. I’d just entered college. It quickly became an essential way to communicate. Along with that phone came the address book, the “hash table” connecting cryptic phone numbers to real names. The phone turned 845-2345 into Jessica or 357-4857 into my best friend. Friends became phone numbers and phone numbers became friends.

I now realize that my phone number became part of my identity in the same way my name is. I didn’t realize this before because the arrangement was never challenged. The phone company had a contractual obligation to ensure my phone number was mine and only mine.

However, for the flurry of new social media identities this isn’t always the case. Often the social media identities we invest our time in building can be taken away in a heartbeat.

Such has been the experience of Steve Poland, who recently found numerous Twitter accounts he created taken back by Twitter. Other users have experienced frustration with disabled accounts on Facebook.

These experiences highlight the core problem, that unlike phone numbers or even domain names you have no guarantees tied to the identities you build within these forums. My hope is that social media publishers realize that the space is maturing, and starting to become a more legitimate and important form of identity. Instead of forcibly making changes to their user’s accounts, I hope sites like Twitter and Facebook can create a fair review process, while establishing authenticated channels for those willing to make agreements for more certainty.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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