Are Facebook and Twitter copyrighted?

[Kristina with a K]

We're making a film for school, and we want to mention Facebook and Twitter, and show people using them. Are their logos/etc copyrighted? It's a free service, so I wouldn't think so, and I hear people mentioning them in songs and movies and stuff. But I need to know for sure ASAP, thanks.

[Eltener]

Of course.

[Sinia]

As it's for a school project, I think it should be fine. They are copyrighted but that refers mainly to not using them for our own services or businesses.

[Daniel]

Yes its Copyrighted But if its Just For School Tho it Should Be Fine As Long As It Does Not Get Published Online

[bcnu]

Names of things like that are trademarks, not "copyrighted". No, you cannot use their trademarks, or anything similar, without their permission, if it is any way associated with social media. Their terms of service specifically prohibit that.

For instance, you might say "the birds twittered as the sun rose over the hills".

You can also use ANY trademarks in a reference form, such as "we tweeted our MySpace links to our Yahoo contacts and they Gmailed our Facebook posts back to Twitter." Not a single trademark infringement in that sentence.

However, "Logon to our Twitter feed and win prizes" would be completely illegal.