Facebook In Trouble With Ferrari Fans?

Ferrari, the Italian carmaker has managed to find its way into news of recent, but with worrying news though. From the Chairman's resignation till the company trying to go mainstream. The company is again in the news, this time because of its fans.

A father and son from Switzerland, who are big fans of Ferrari created a fan page for the Italian brand on Facebook. Now they have sued the famous social networking site and the car maker, claiming that Ferrari have taken over that very page and gained control over the website.

Oliver and Sammy Wasem claim that their Facebook page debuted in June 2008. The Italian carmaker Ferrari created its own page as well but wasn't that popular among fans. This made the company to ask Facebook to give administrative control over the Ferrari Fan Page.

ferrari in trouble with fans

In March 2009 Ferrari contacted the father and son duo and said few legal issues had forced Ferrari to take over the administration of their page.

After a Ferrari co-administrator was added without the permission the Wasems, the company began to negotiate about a partnership to manage the fan page and create a new F1 page.

Then later, the Wasems were cut off from their page entirely by the social networking site, Facebook. They had no access at all.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was contacted by letter from the attorney and demanded that the Wasems be given their access, they got a reply by a company attorney that the Formula 1 page had been hacked and their rights were restored.

Once Ferrari complained to Facebook that they didn't have access to the Formula 1 page, Facebook deactivated the page and shifted all its fans to another similar page under Ferrari's control.

The father and son have claimed that there were more than 16 million fans on that page and may be worth anywhere from USD 174 (Rs 10,654) to USD 1000 (Rs 61,235) per fan in terms of advertising.

Facebook's rules state that the page is not the official page of the brand and official brand pages must be administered by an authorised representative of the company.

Most Read Articles

English
Article Published On: Monday, October 27, 2014, 9:22 [IST]
Get Instant News Updates
Enable
x
Notification Settings X
Time Settings
Done
Clear Notification X
Do you want to clear all the notifications from your inbox?
Settings X