Facebook Reinstates 47,000+ Member Fan Page
Like a thief in the night Facebook took away Jonathan Rivera’s business page, The Official Real Estate Referral Group, that had more than 47,000 fans.
Now it looks like Facebook is doing the walk of shame or maybe just what they should have done in the first place. After this post was Tweeted nearly 400 times and shared on Facebook 315 times in the last 24 hours it seems that they have reinstated the page and simply changed the vanity URL as was the general consensus of fairness by the masses buzzing about it.
The issue in question was that Jon’s original vanity URL, set up nearly 2 years ago, was Facebook.com/SocialRealtors and was indeed a trademark violation regarding the use of the word Realtor according to the National Association of Realtors. NAR contacted Facebook about having the domain changed and instead, without warning, Facebook took the page and thus the hard built community away from Jon.
I want to applaud Facebook for making the right decision on this one, even if they again hit the buttons without warning or notice. Also a HUGE THANKS for the way that so many of you rallied around this hot topic and helped to get the word out.
You can visit Jon’s new, uglier domain and see the page that started all the controversy in the first place. While your there show him some “like” for his troubles.
Seems for now social media may still be run by us!
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Great to hear. Oh the power of social media… it’s a beautiful thing!
Was just about to post about this on our site but saw that this was reinstated. Great news and shows the power of social media!
I’m surprise it took NAR TWO years to know about this! In our code it clearly states that the word “Realtor” is a trademark not to be used outside of the “official entity.” Lesson learned! But, glad to know it was reinstated.