@SLOfficialtweet branded “not official” by Linden Lab

Posted on by Inara Pey

A new Twitter account appeared on Friday March 7th. “SecondLife Official” (@SLOfficialtweet) billed itself as the “new Second Life official twitter page”. This took a number of people by surprise, given there is a legitimate Second Life Official Twitter account (@SecondLife).

The appearance of the account prompted a question on its legitimacy from Strawberry Singh (among others), which in turn prompted an immediate and unequivocal response from Linden Lab:

false accountPeter Grey, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications further underlined the unofficial nature of the account in an e-mail to me, stating:

That account is NOT official, nor from Linden Lab. It was first brought to our attention this morning, and we’ve been replying to queries on Twitter about it to confirm it’s not legit.

The account doesn’t appear to be a phishing attempt – the link included in the account header seems to refer to the official secondlife.com website. However, as it stands, it is likely that this account could be blocked / removed by Twitter as it would appear to be a pretty clear attempt at brand impersonation and trademark misuse.

Parody accounts, unaffiliated accounts, etc., are not new on Twitter. However, many of these do carry an indication that they are not in any way official. Twitter also have an account verification process for those accounts that might be subject to impersonation in order to further help prevent issues of misrepresentation. Given the extent to which the Lab uses Twitter, having their own official account verified might help discourage this particular prank from being repeated in future.

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Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

8 thoughts on “@SLOfficialtweet branded “not official” by Linden Lab”

  2. I appreciate the fact that Peter Gray acted swiftly to confirm that this was not an official account, and he did it in an official capacity instead of the usual wait for Illgetbacktoyou Linden to act/respond.

    Here’s hoping that as part of the new Ebbe regime, other issues of concern to the Second Life customer base get similar escalated and expedited treatment.

    -ls/cm

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    1. In fairness, when approached directly on matters of this kind, Peter has always been rapid in getting back to me. I was just a little delayed in getting the post out due to things happening in RL.

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  3. I agree with your advice in the final paragraph, LL should take it. I personally have been through this kind of thing…my RL counterpart has had impostors open social net accounts in his name. The way to stop it – aside from requesting the net involved to take them down (they always cooperate, for fear of a lawsuit, I guess) – is to establish one’s own account on the service, even when it’s a service you don’t want, and go through whatever verification process they have. It makes the next “take down” much quicker and easier.

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  5. Pingback: @SLOfficialtweet: A brand impersonation attempt? | Mona Eberhardt

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