Social Media for Lawyers: Owning Your Followers

When you engage in social media for lawyers, you likely spend a lot of time, effort and marketing funds building followers. In many cases, one or more employees are assigned to the job of interacting with those followers and sharing information. The question that arises, however, is what happens if your employee decides to leave and take the followers with him?

Twitter Followers as Customer List

Recently, the question of who Twitter followers belong to was raised in a lawsuit brought by a company called PhoneDog. The company was suing its former employee for the theft of a so-called “customer list.” That customer list was the 17,000 followers on the company’s Twitter account.

According to The New York Times article on the lawsuit, the Tweets for the Twitter account had been written by an employee named Noah Kravitz. When Mr. Kravitz left the company, he was originally told that he could keep his account and followers, as long as he tweeted occasionally about the company. When Kravitz changed his name from Phonedog_Noah to NoahKravitz but kept all of the followers, PhoneDog sued for the theft of their customer list. They sought $2.50 per month per follower, which added up to a total damage award of $340,000.

Ownership of Twitter Followers

The court does not yet have precedent determining exactly who owns Twitter followers, so this case is likely to be a landmark decision that will set the stage for future disputes on the ownership of social media relationships. The judge did, however, indicate that this suit has merit and may go forward.

Some scholars indicate that ownership of Twitter accounts could come down to the purpose that the account was opened and whether it was clearly a corporate account or not. The relationship between the primary Tweeter and the company with the account may also be relevant. For instance, in the Kravitz case, Mr. Kravitz was allegedly just a contractor. His status as a contractor weakens PhoneDog’s argument that he took trade secrets from the company when he took their customer list.

Defining the Law

Although there is some speculation as to how ownership of Twitter accounts will be decided, the fact remains that there are many legal complexities. In fact, further complications can also arise in different situations, such as when a company hires a popular or well-known Tweeter who reviews their product. The Times gives the example of blogger Philip Berne, who was hired to review phones for Samsung but who also posts explicit and personal reviews of the products on his blog.

Resolving questions about this new area of law is sure to be challenging for the courts as they tackle issues that have not yet been addressed. In any case, the stakes are high for companies who may invest a great deal of money in building a base of followers and who don’t want to lose those potentials sources of customer contact.

Until the law makes clear who owns a Twitter or other account, any firm partaking in social media for lawyers should establish their own internal policy that the followers belong to the company. At least that way, the firm will have a legal leg to stand on should a problem arise.


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *