München darf nicht München heißen:
(Munich is not allowed to be called Munich)

Facebook has removed the city of Munich’s official fanpage address of facebook.com/muenchen. The link was removed on the 16th February 2012 without any warning, according to Lajos Csery, official representative of the Munich City company(? rough translation, sounds like a city run company responsible for promoting Munich, something similar to a Chamber of Commerce or Tourist Bureau?).

Facebook replied to a request for information as to why the page had been pulled, saying that the name “München” (aka Muenchen without the umlauts) breaks the new page naming rules. Despite further requests as to which specific rule the name contravened, Facebook refused to give any further information.

According to Heise, it looks like it could be a move by Facebook to control the profiles for locations itself in the future.

In the meantime, the fanpage has relocated itself to facebook.com/Stadtportal.Muenchen. Even so, around 400,000 fans of Munich were immediately barred from the community, only a small number of users were automatically moved over. Facebook is slowly moving the users over to the new page.


( in German : http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/ ... 36194.html )