A man in California is being sued by his former employer having taken his Twitter account with him on leaving along with his 17,000 followers. That’s not many when measured against Stephen Fry’s nearly 4 million followers, but it seems it’s the principle that is irking the man’s employer, PhoneDog.com.
Noah Kravitz claims he was given permission to re-name his account and continue to use it, but the company claims otherwise and has valued the damage done on the basis that each follower is worth $2.50 a month. If you do the ‘math’ then that’s 17000 x $2.50 x 8 months (period for which he operated after leaving) = $340,000. The court’s decision will affect future outcomes in the US and possibly here. It seems clear that if an account is used purely for work purposes, then it will belong to the company. Where there is joint personal and work benefit/activity, it will be a very grey area.
The fact that an individual employee’s own profile might be enhanced in either situation, will have to be accepted by any employer in the way that such things happen (still) without the aid of social media.
Putting a price on a Twitter follower and determining who ‘owns’ them seems like a dilemma best left to the legal eagles both sides of the pond – but sorting that might cost even more than $340k in being sought by PhoneDog.com.
What’s your view? Have you moved your twitter account when you’ve moved jobs? Do your employees operate work-named Twitter accounts or personal ones?
