One T, Twiter Parking Space
First off, no I did not misspell Twitter in the title.
What I’m referring to is twiter.com, which I coincidentally did find because I misspelled Twitter (two t) in the address.
Twiter.com (one t) is what I like to call a Parking Space (I can’t imagine I’m the first person to use this term, but this is what I call it): a generic website used to hold a space where someone might like to park their website, or in this case, the claimed URL of a site spelled one letter off.
I noticed a funny thing when I visited the one t site; I was legitimately confused into thinking I was where I should be. I imagine this was for three reasons,
- I was expecting to go to Twitter
- I am used to twitter failing and reverting back to some less styled form of HTML and broken CSS
- The blatant use of an existing Twitter illustration in the middle of the page.
This raises an issue…
Is this a trademark or copyright violation?
Well, yes, it creates consumer confusion
But if Twitter were to act, it would raise a conflict.
Twitter already encourages the use of its icons and imagery as part of its button-oriented-proliferation across any number of blogs and websites. So, to attack one site, would set a new standard of how they approach violators.
So…
What do you think about twiter.com (that’s one t for clarity)?
Should Twitter bye the parking space,
sue the holding company,
ignore the problem?