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Aaron Strout

Aaron Strout
Vice President of New Media
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Build vs. Join and ZDNet Drama
Unlike my other posts, this will be a short one, mainly because I have the luxury of linking over to another post I did recently for my friend Jennifer Leggio aka @mediaphyter who blogs at ZDNet. I'm posting on this topic for two reasons:
  1. I thought the people that read my blog regularly might like to read more about the topic of "Build vs. Join" i.e. does it make sense for your company to build their own business social network/community or join others like Facebook, Satisfaction or Youtube. In this post, I list the pros and cons of both. Read more to find out my recommendation.
  2. An interesting thing happened soon after Jennifer posted my "Build vs. Join" post. The owner of a company that builds "brand-ed" communities* (I'm purposely not linking to his page or mentioning his or his company's name because I don't want to give him Google credit OR trigger a "cease and desist letter myself) sent a "cease and desist" e-mail for my use of the term "'brand-ed' communties.*" This gentleman claims that he "owns" the trademark for "brand-ed" communities and so pointed out that my use of the term on Jennifer's blog violated his trademark rights.

    What was somewhat comical was this guy's cease and desist e-mail was a cross between a sales pitch and a "legal threat." More amusing yet was that upon forwarding this this gentleman's e-mail to ZDNet's legal counsel (something Jennifer is required to do), they informed her that this gentleman didn't have a leg to stand on. As a result, Jennifer turned around and responded with a retort that pointed out the irony of someone that prided themselves in "brand-ed" communities not understanding the use/misuse of his own brand. Adding insult to proverbial injury, one of ZDNet's lawyers, well-knownk legal blogger, Denise Howell, responded with a post of her own essentially shaking her finger at this guy's obnoxious behavior.

    The morale of the story? Make sure you have your facts straight when dealing with bloggers and especially when dealing with bloggers that are also lawyers.
Special thanks to Jennifer for affording me the opportunity to guest post on her ZDNet blog!


*I added a hyphen to the term "brand-ed" to avoid triggering a Google alert/cease and desist letter. ;)




Sun, Jul 27 2008

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