Domain squatting is nothing new. Despite a number of high-profile defeats for cyber squatters the rise of social media sites now means that major brands are at risk of having their name hijacked. Here are 10 of the biggest brands in the world who didn’t act quickly enough to secure their own Youtube page.

Number 10

Youtube.com/McDonalds (Student From Singapore)

McDonalds has had more than its share of PR problems in the past, but surely a company of this size shouldn’t be scooped to their own Youtube domain by a student from Singapore. The account www.youtube.com/mcdonalds has two videos in their account, and both clips that have nothing to do with burgers. The student is obviously reluctant to give up his account as it could be a cash cow in the future.

Number 9

Youtube.Com/DavidBowie

David Bowie lost out to his own Youtube domain and now has been forced to us the rather clunky username of youtube.com/OfficialDavidBowie. Youtube deals with squatters by changing the url file tree to redirect users to the official page. For example, if you type in “youtube.com/DavidBowie” you’ll land on the “Official David Bowie” page. It’s just lucky for Bowie that YouTube doesn’t always mind making ch-ch-changes.

Number 8

Youtube.com/MTV (Korean Youtube account with over 300 subscribers)

You’d think that for a company that pioneered music videos they would have been more aware than most other brands how important Youtube might become. Unfortunately for MTV their account has been taken by someone in Korea with just over300 subscribers. Instead of showing the latest cutting edge music videos and interviews, anyone visiting MTV’s channel will have to make do with watching Korean gameshows and pregnancy videos.

Number 7

Youtube.com/CocaCola (9 subscribers!)

If you saw the username CocaCola on youtube you probably wouldn’t expect to see such titles as “Tales of the LOLbyss” available to watch. What makes this even more surprising is that Coke recognised the value of Youtube pretty early on when they held a competition for users to upload their videos.

Number 6

Youtube.com/Volkswagen (1 subscriber)

Volkswagen are no stranger to problems with Youtube users. They even tried to take a user to court because a user put a Nazi spin on a VW Golf commercial. If having a spoof of their video put up on Youtube wasn’t bad enough they’ve also lost out on their username to someone who has a the grand number of 1 subscriber.

Number 5

Youtube.com/BMW (Eddi, 48 years, 14subscribers)

Another car company who missed out on their own name was the German giant, BMW. You might not learn anything about cars or BMW if you visit this channel, but you will get to see Britney Spears and Christina Milian.

Number 4

Youtube.com/Disney (9 Subscribers)

Youtube could have been the perfect place to showcase old Disney films and trailers for upcoming movies. Instead, the Disney channel on Youtube has 10 subscribers and the owner of the channel has only watched 1 video.

Number 3

Youtube.com/ IBM (6 Subscribers)

The owner of the IBM channel has watched over 14,000 videos. Judging by some of the comments left it seems that there are other youtube users who think the site belongs to IBM. This is one of the comments left “i hate you!!! i hate ur laptop! (mine) it sucks! but very light =)”

Number 2

Youtube.com/Microsoft (32 Subscribers)

Despite the mixed reactions to the Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates ads last year, surely the Microsoft username would have been far more memorable and valuable than the Youtube.com/WindowsVideo that they eventually went with. You can’t watch the ads on on the Microsoft channel but a clip entitled, “LINDSAY FULLY LOADED” has been set as a favourite.

Number 1

Youtube.com/Yahoo (45 Subscribers)

Probably the most surprising of the companies who didn’t secure their own username was Yahoo. The search giants probably hoped that Yahoo videos would be a bigger success as Youtube, but it still means that they lost out to someone with only 45 subscribers.

While it might seem harmless to most – if you are a brand and are not securing your Youtube name then you could be seriously hurting your brand.

The Youtube Report 2009 reveals that 43% of users click on the username to discover what’s uploaded in that channel. It is important for a brand to own the username to control the messaging being communicated under its name. 61% agree with “ If a username is the same as a familiar brand, I would expect the brand to be behind the channel”.

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