Over the past 12 month Drew has made great friends with ..
… a nice guy in Florida named Jonathan Riviera who started up a fan page "The Official Real Estate Referral Group" – that page attracted over 47,000 fans – yes – forty seven thousand.
As of yesterday the the page is no more, Facebook took it down.
Why?
Facebook pulled the plug on Jonathans page because the National Association of Realtors took issue the the vanity URL that was created 2 years ago – Facebook.com/SocialRealtors.
If you know anyone in Facebook or have an inside track please share so we can get Jonathans page back!
Background:
The term Realtor is trademarked and rigorously protected by a whole department at NAR. The only way a NAR member you can use is is if it's in conjunction with your name.
This is where Jonathan got into trouble, NAR would have been quite happy for Jonathan to change the vanity URL but Facebook has always been clear about page names - and in this case with NAR complaining about trademark violations Facebook simply derailed the site.
Once you create a Facebook page name you cannot ever change it or transfer it.
Here is a screenshot of a Facebook help page that spells out their rules:
Forgive me please Facebook, for I have egg on my face :-(
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, I can't believe FB wouldn't give him a chance to rename it when it has been sooooo established. I am sure they made their fortune from the advertising on his page.
UPDATE: Facebook relented and gave him back his page with a new URL.
Well done Facebook – we appreciate the about face and I'm sure that Jonathan is thrilled and just a little relieved to say the least!
I once got http://www.RealtorCommissionBooster.com as a domain name…
took 5 days till a 'nice' lady attorney sent me an abundantly clear
cease and desist email message.
I then checked on domains auctions with 'realtor' in the name and
there were plenty. Interestingly they all were selling them with
R & T capitalized like ' …RealTor….com'
Glad FB helped and bent in favor of its community of ravid users.
Yves Baggi