News about the political unrest in Libya has been flooding the airwaves since protests broke out last week. According to ZDNet, on Friday night, Libya was cut off from the Internet just hours before soldiers began massacring protesters, killing hundreds over the course of the weekend.

In Libya, the Internet is controlled by Libya Telecom & Technology, a telecommunications company chaired by the son of dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi. Until now, the country has enjoyed relatively open Internet access, at least as compared to other dictatorships like Cuba and North Korea. Those of you who are up on your ccTLD knowledge know that Libya’s country code is .LY – the TLD used for popular URL shorteners Bit.Ly and Ow.Ly.

Fortunately, especially for active Twitter users, Libya’s imposed exile from the Internet does not mean that .LY, and the sites hosted on it, will cease to function – at least not right away. .LY uses five root servers, only two of which are located in Libya (another two are located in Oregon, and the last is located in the Netherlands). These servers can keep .LY domains running for a maximum of 28 days. In technical terms, the servers are configured such that the Start of Authority Record expiry time to live is 2,419,200, or roughly 28 days.

If the Libyan government keeps the Internet cut off, .LY addresses will eventually die off as well. While it helps that there are .LY servers outside the country to keep domains up and running temporarily in situations like these, the Libya example shows that ccTLDs are not impervious to government-mandated shutdowns. Companies that choose to use ccTLDs for business purposes should be aware of this fact, and have contingency plans for such situations.

We all remember the debacle that BP went through this summer when an anonymous individual set up a Twitter account under the handle @BPGlobalPR and began posting satirical tweets about the company’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, posing as a BP public relations executive.

Recently, Kenneth Cole has found itself in a similar pickle.  On its verified @KennethCole account, the company tweeted the following:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo - KC”

Since protests broke out two weeks ago, Twitter users have been using the Cairo hashtag, #Cairo, to discuss the events in Egypt.  Kenneth Cole has received a good deal of backlash for the tweet, including its very own parody Twitter account.  @KennethColePR began tweeting on February 3, posting off-color messages such as “Our looks are dropping faster than the World Trade Center” and “Our Tuscon store is locked and loaded with Spring looks”.

So for the second time in less than a year, we’re seeing a public relations crisis spawning a parody Twitter account.  In both the BP and the Kenneth Cole cases, the accounts garnered thousands of followers in a very short amount of time.  Perhaps we all should learn from these instances and consider proactively securing relevant Twitter handles; maybe even names such as @brandPR. 

You’ve heard of brands buying their competitors’ brand names as keywords in Google’s AdWords program.  According to a recent TechCrunch article, the practice has spread to Twitter’s Promoted Tweets feature: HP has “bought” Apple’s hash tag.  In other words, HP has paid to have its promoted tweets appear when users search “#apple”, “#mac” and “#macbook”.

Of course, any Twitter user has the right to use any hash tag, and to make any word or phrase into a hash tag.  Hash tags are a community creation, not an official feature provided by Twitter.  For an overview of how they work, check out Twitter’s Help Center.

So what does it mean that HP “bought” Apple’s hash tags?  Basically it means that when users search for #apple or any of the other tags HP purchased, or click on them in other users’ tweets, the first tweet they see will be from HP.  This tweet will be clearly labeled as a promoted tweet, and from what I’ve observed, most are advertising deals on HP computers.

For many, Twitter is a great way to measure popular sentiment about a topic.  They search a term, then briefly scan through the first page or two of tweets in order to get a general feel for what people think about it.  Twitter actually just filed a UDRP against the owner of Twittersearch.com, (a play on twitter.com/search) where users can search for trends, based upon the value of these types of queries. 

As with many IP issues in the social spaces, there is a lack of precedent on how to handle a situation like this.  Until that time, I’m sure we’ll see plenty of competitors paying Twitter handsomely for the opportunity to speak to each other’s consumers.

Last month, we posted about how brands are beginning to more frequently promote Facebook or Twitter pages in their advertisements.  Well, we recently found even more data pointing to the increased importance of social media in conducting business online.

Nielson data reveals that social media usage has increased 43% in the last year, meaning that the average person now spends 23% of his or her daily Internet time on various social media sites (the largest percentage of any category of online activity).  Data also suggests that Facebook is becoming more of a destination than a traffic source, indicating that consumers prefer to read news, watch videos, and interact within Facebook rather than being redirected to an outside site — even one owned by a trusted brand.

So, what does this mean for brands?  It’s becoming more important than ever to protect your brand in the social media space.  With Facebook as a destination, Internet users are increasingly likely to seek out branded content within the confines of the social space.  However, Facebook and other social media platforms still have a long way to go in developing mechanisms that protect trademarks, meaning brands must take responsibility for diligently monitoring their own names.  Additionally, the informal, community-style structure of the Facebook interface allows individuals who are not associated with a brand to start a group or page reflecting personal opinions on that brand.

While there is no way to completely control conversations about your brand within social media — nor should you attempt to do this — owning your brand’s name and various trademarks as usernames can ensure that users know where to find official and branded content.  Far too many brands have lagged behind on laying claim to their trademarks, division and product names, etc. as usernames, resulting in consumer confusion and negative publicity (need we re-visit the @BPGlobalPR incident?).

The take away for today is that social media is becoming a significant factor in how we seek out and consume content.  Brands need to make sure they are findable on various social media platforms if they wish to be part of the ever-evolving cycle of information consumption.