Posts Tagged ‘ check username ’

Announcing our Reseller Program: Bundles user names with domain name registration services

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Today, we’re happy to announce a reseller program for domain name resellers interested in offering social network user names services to their customers. The TM.Biz Reseller Program offers a simple programmable interface for resellers to seamlessly offer the real-time reservation of user names to their domain name customers.

See below for the rest of our announcement:
“User names from social networks are the new brand identifiers for the Internet. Companies launching new brands must now secure their brands on networks such as Facebook and Twitter before any product announcement,” says Tom Barrett, founder of TM.Biz.  “With our reseller program, companies can secure their new brand on the leading social networks at the same time they secure their desired domain names from their favorite domain name reseller.”

Social media has become the number one activity on the Internet, representing 25% of online time by end-users.  While there are about 200 million domain names, the top 20 social networks alone have an estimated two billion user names.  The popularity of social networks is demonstrated in the appearance of brand’s social network user names on billboards and television commercials instead of their domain name.

The same first-come, first-served procedure exists for user names as for domain names.  However, there is no trademark dispute policy for user names.  In addition, many social networks follow a practice of not releasing deleted user names.  So, brand owners should act fast to secure user names even if they are not planning to use them right away.

By using the TM.Biz programmable interface, resellers can help their customers secure user names on the top 500 social networks.  Resellers for TM.Biz enjoy the following benefits:

  • Resellers maintain the customer relationship throughout the process
  • Resellers develop a new recurring revenue stream from existing customers
  • Resellers are provided a turnkey service that does not require any capital investment

Interested resellers should contact sales@tm.biz for more details.

Don’t have a free TM.Biz account yet? Visit www.tm.biz and sign up today!

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Service Update: New Power Tool Enables Portfolio Audit of Usernames on Social Networks

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Today, we’re launching Power Tool, a significant addition to our workflow tool to help secure trademarks and brands on social networks. Power Tool allows enterprises to upload their portfolio of trademarks and search for matching usernames across the Internet’s top 500 social networks. Users can investigate taken names, reserve available usernames and share results.

To celebrate the launch, we’re waiving fees for Power Tool during the month of November.

Read the rest of our formal announcement here:

The TM.Biz Power Tool can be used to achieve different objectives within the lifecycle of a trademark.  It can be used as a bulk availability search for a list of names of a proposed new brand or to research a company’s entire trademark portfolio. Search terms can be entered in a search box using cut-and-paste or uploaded via a simple text file.

“This is an opportunity for trademark owners to perform a portfolio audit to see how well they are protected on social media and to determine if there is social squatting on their trademarks,” says Tom Barrett, President of TM.Biz. “Most trademark owners are concerned about Facebook and Twitter, but lesser known sites such as Habbo and Qzone with a combined membership of 300 million users is also where they could be exposed. Our new service searches the 500 most popular social media sites and we’re offering Power Tool for free during the month of November.”

The TM.Biz Power Tool works offline, freeing up the user to do other work while it is processed. Once completed, users can review the results in a single report or review the results online using the TM.Biz dashboard. Reports are also available in downloadable text-only formats to allow law firms and resellers to generate private-label reports for their clients.

“With Power Tool, trademark owners can now search hundreds of trademarks in one step, saving them weeks of labor costs for a low price,” says Tom Barrett, President of TM.Biz. “TM.Biz is the only service that allows a one-step trademark search of usernames on the Internet’s top 500 social networks.”

In addition to TM.Biz’s Search capabilities, the TM.Biz’s workflow service also reserves social network usernames, generates in-use reports and offers annual watch subscriptions. Access to the service is restricted to trademark lawyers and brand managers. Eligible users are invited to apply for a free account at http://www.tm.biz.


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Why register your trademark on so many (500!) networks?

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
For trademark owners, establishing a presence across various mediums is an important, but time-consuming task. And, it’s generally accepted that it is prudent to protect your marks on the most popular social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. But registering your name on over 500 social networks? Some trademark owners wonder “Do I really need to protect my name on that many networks — especially on the ones I’ve never heard of?”

Based on TM.Biz’s feedback from current clients, let us weigh in:

In regard to social networks, many of our clients are actively managing only their accounts on Twitter and Facebook; however they certainly do not want impersonators or cybersquatters misrepresenting them on other networks. In that way, the role of usernames as brand identifiers is following a similar pattern as domain names and many industry professionals are recognizing the need for reserving their username on all networks.

When protecting a trademark, there are several things to address – but we believe it’s time for social media to be a consideration in the traditional lifecycle of a trademark.

As a result, TM.Biz has tailored its solutions to allow users to outsource the tedious process of checking usernames. We search all networks simultaneously instead of one by one – making the process quick and really affordable – as it’s completely free! We also allow users to save all previous searches so variations on a trademark can be researched as well as a whole portfolio of marks.

Finally, TM.Biz does a lot more than search and reserve usernames.  It also generates reports to aid in clearing new trademarks, conduct in-use investigations and be alerted to potential infringements.

Trademark lawyers and brand owners can sign up for a free account and use all of our features at http://www.tm.biz

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How many social networks are there?

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Separating the wheat from the chaff for trademark owners.

The growth of Social networks, or member-based communities, are exploding.   A conservative estimate is 4,000 active networks.  Included in this list is Ning, a platform for building your own social network that boasts hosting over 300,000 different networks.

Of course, not all of these social networks will survive and trademark owners can safely ignore them.   But with usernames on social networks now serving the same function as domain names, trademark owners can easily feel overwhelmed in identifying which networks they should care about.

The challenge is –how do you determine which ones warrant trademark protection?

TM.Biz addresses this problem by measuring the popularity of each social network, based on website traffic and the degree to which members can promote themselves.

From these measurements, we have identified the top 50, top 100, top 250 and top 500 social networks.  Trademark owners can then decide how deep they want to protect their trademarks.

TM.Biz also tracks when new social networks rise in popularity enough to warrant being added to the top 500, 250, 100 or top 50 list.  We then notify interested trademark owners and help them secure their trademarks on these new social networks.

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