Is Facebook two faced ? It is certainly the future.

Facebook offers something new to your marketing mix…until an American Company is given your page and Facebook refuses to talk about it. Are they inept, rude or complicit in supporting US based companies at the expense of those of other countries or have we all misjudged how important this is and not allocated adequate resources to sorting out or social medias?

It is being reported that The German pharmaceuticals company Merck KGaA has been forced to take legal action against the social media giant Facebook after discovering what is described as the "the apparent takeover of its Facebook page". The webpage currently appears to be being used  by the firms American rival Merck & Co.

Merck KGaA's lawyer claims to have sent a letters and emails to a number of Facebook employees and agents but describes the responses as inert at best and possibly obstructive and adds that requests for a telephone conversation have been met with the assertion that nobody from Facebook is available.

Merck KGaA said in 2010 entered into an agreement with Facebook for the exclusive rights to www.facebook.com/merck and had been given access to the  administrative rights to the page but on 11 October this year it discovered that content on the site now belonged to Merck & Co of the US who are proud to boast the American Diabetes Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as their Facebook friends.

Merck KGaA say they have taken legal action to ask Facebook for information however a BBC reporter may have found that the court filing notes also contain more commercial elements around loss of earnings and contractual issues.

Facebook have not commented except to say "We are looking into this."

Social Media Marketing

Cork Monkey Is aware that marketing experts are increasingly having to account for social media as part of their marketing mix and increasingly see social media pages as much a part of their brand as their trademark, logo or letterhead.

Increasingly there are customers (not necessarily in this case) whose life is more or less online and who do not watch TV or read magazines in the same way as the previous generation and social media is a way of accessing these customers who are often on Facebook," for their own purposes making it a great meeting space for organisations ranging from Giants like McDonalds  to local concerns like Bay Traditional Sweets (local to NW England) where they can meet their public (Cork Monkey is not yet on Facebook – do you think we should be? what would it add?)

Is there something more sinister going on? America is quick to condemn the Chinese Patenting system– who, they say, put sovereign interests before good practice – slowing down the patents of American companies and effectively allowing Chinese companies to progress the same patent faster which they (the US companies) say effectively steals the patent.

Is this not the same principle.  Non US companies – despite the much lauded free market find the market is freer for some than for others especially where it becomes necessary to engage with the expensive US legal system simply to conduct business.

Note that this is not a critique of the US as such Cork Monkey is sure that US domestic small business finds the dice equally loaded against them in a system that favours the a particular size and structure of business (some of which may be foreign owned but that are in a position to play by American Rules).

What the answer is to this is I do not know, I am sure both companies and Facebook have all acted with honour but an error has been made somewhere and it will take some fixing. However the wider issues are interestting and Cork Monkey will be following them. 

Social Media is now deeply embedded in both our business and our personal lives and there is the potential for these to become blurred .  Cork Monkey is very interested in this. Does it matter? Can it harm us? What are the benefits? There are a number of questions around this – what do you think? Comments by the usual route.

CM