A mobile phone news site is suing a former employee after claiming that he refused to hand over a Twitter account and stole thousands of its followers after leaving the company.
Noah Kravitz, who worked as a reviewer for Phonedog Media for more than four years, created the Twitter account in 2007 when he first started to work at the firm. He used the handle @Phonedog_Noah to tweet to the 17,000 followers he had gained since that date.
Kravitz left Phonedog in October 2010 and changed his Twitter handle to @noahkravitz, but last summer, the organisation demanded that he stop using the account and set about suing him for its projected value of $340,000 or $2.50 per follower per month.
Kravitz told Forbes magazine that he saw no reason to turn the account over to PhoneDog because he had created it and was the only one that knew its password.
But Phonedog claimed in its lawsuit that the Twitter followers and Kravitz’s Twitter password were its “trade secrets”. The firm, which attracts approximately 1.5 million visitors each month, uses various social media channels, including Twitter, to drive traffic to its site.
It said in a statement: ‘The costs and resources invested by Phonedog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of Phonedog Media.’
Its complaint alleges that Kravitz’s actions were “designed to disrupt, and [have] in fact disrupted, PhoneDog’s economic relationships with its existing and prospective users”.
Judge James, presiding in the federal district court of Northern California, ruled that PhoneDog’s economic relationships had suffered because Kravitz had taken the account and declined to dismiss the suit, as requested by Kravitz. The case will be heard later this year and could define who owns a Twitter account and the financial value of a tweeter.
Kravitz told Forbes: “No one asked me to create the account. No one told me what to tweet there. I had no inkling then that [having a Twitter account] would become an essential part of being a so-called journalist. [With an employer] in the future, I would make it clear that a social networking account is mine and that I own it and its contacts.”
Since leaving PhoneDog, Kravitz has landed a job with a rival called TechnoBuffalo, but, according to PhoneDog, he continues to use the renamed account to “communicate with PhoneDog’s followers without PhoneDog’s permission” as well as to discredit and disparage the company.
3 Responses
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what about the discrediting and disparaging?
I share the view about ownership of the account.
But it is said that this ex-employee is using it to "discredit and disparage" his former employer. That may amount to defamation.
Remember this is a US case. The same principles may not apply in the UK, not least in respect of damages.
Twitter followers do not belong to the employer (or the employee
Building a social media profile involves the employee’s own voice and personal networks – therefore, Kravitz owns the Twitter account. However, no one "owns" Twitter followers – the followers themselves can unfollow at any time, and do so at their own discretion. Further, contact information is not a "trade secret" – it’s so easy to obtain that there is no true "loss" for the employer, so I don’t see how there can really be a case here.