Boot a Blogger Blogspot Blog

January 8, 2006 9:25 AM

How do I achieve shutting down a Blogger Blogspot blog?

I have been a Blogger user since July 2001. My Blogger username is ontask. I have my own domain name of ontask.net, so I post directly to my own website. I have just discovered, that back in September of 2004, a Blogspot blog was created with the blog name and URL of ontask. Apparently, there are no restrictions to setting up a Blogspot blog using a Blogger username that is not your own.

This is causing brand confussion and difficulty in syndicating my Blogger account content to other locations.

In particular, on SuprGlu when asked for my Blogger username, instead of being able to import my Blogger content, I am getting the Blogspot blog of ontask content [2]. (SuprGlu is another one of those new Web 2.0 sites that has popped up. I created a Suprglu account in order to evaluate and review the service.)

I've written an email to Google and to Blogger explaining the situation. I guess I'm feeling unhopeful and just need to rant.

I realize that my blog content is not currently really exciting... but I hope to improve the quality such that I can build traffic. I suppose my main problem is that I am passionate about the discussion of how to improve consistant Internet identity. This recent discovery certainly makes the issue of Internet identity personal.

Any advice or comments on how to cope with this situation? Would I have any legal rights to the use of my Blogger username in other areas in the Blogger system? Should I just shrug and say, "C'est La Vie?"

posted by chase to Law & Government (7 answers total)

I really don't think that person should be shut down. Your username is a common phrase and I'm sure they registered it without any malicious intent. I think your best option is just to deal with it, or to attempt to contact the owner of ontask.blogspot and see if they would be willing to transfer their account over to you.
posted by cloeburner at 9:33 AM on January 8, 2006

The SuprGlu thing sounds like a bug on their part. The brand confusion is just life.
posted by smackfu at 9:35 AM on January 8, 2006

There's only a couple of posts on the ontask.blogspot.com blog, and they're from a year and a half ago.

Your best bet would be to try to get in contact with the owner of that blog and offer them a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com in exchange for handing you the keys to that blog. Then you can shut it down and move on with your plans.

They aren't doing anything wrong, so it would be malicious of you to try to get them shut down. I mean, what's up with that? Treat them like a human being and make it worth their while to help you out. They might be glad to do so. Especially if you show them respect.

If you start trying to mess with their site because you feel you own the phrase 'ontask', you can probably forget being on their good side.
posted by voidcontext at 9:44 AM on January 8, 2006

Also, when you try to acquire the blog, don't start by giving away that you already have an investment in Ontask as a brand. Use a yahoo account or something without obvious ties to your main blog or the price is likely to go up quickly.
posted by Good Brain at 10:12 AM on January 8, 2006

Issue seems to me to be that suprglu assumes: displayed blogger name = name.blogspot.com. For example if I put Anne into the required field over on suprglu then it fetches anne.blogspot.com, (oops that's not mine) even though Anne is my displayed name on blogger, it is not the name of my blog, which is what suprglu really wants. I would contact suprglu and let them know about the problem rather than trying to get ontask.blogspot just so suprglu works correctly.
posted by squeak at 12:44 PM on January 8, 2006

What voidcontext said. In my opinion, the owner of the blogspot isn't really doing anything wrong. Be nice to them, explain, and ask.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:18 PM on January 8, 2006

The blogspotter shouldn't have to do anything. It isn't their fault that SuprGlu makes the unwarranted assumption that a Blogger username automatically corresponds with a Blogspot subdomain. Yell at the SuprGlu people.
posted by dhartung at 3:59 PM on January 8, 2006