PhoneDog LLC is suing its former employee, Noah Kravitz, over ownership of a Twitter account and 17,000 followers. Kravitz went to work for PhoneDog in 2006 and started a social networking account under the name @PhoneDog_Noah. He changed the account name to @noahkravitz upon leaving the company last year, according to a report by The New York Times. It was when Kravitz went to work for a competitor that PhoneDog sued, claiming ownership of the 17,000 followers and placing the followers' individual value at $2.50 each per month of use, for a total of $340,000. The lawsuit may have implications for IT strategists who make policy decisions for companies, and for IT analysts who support social media accounts for their companies.

A blog posting by Jessica Godell on the Partridge IP Law website lays out the details of the lawsuit. PhoneDog is a website that posts editorial content and reviews of mobile products and services. The company's lawsuit lays claim to the 17,000 followers from the @PhoneDog_Noah account, saying that they are part of the PhoneDog customer database. PhoneDog claims they asked Kravitz to return the account after he was terminated from the company and that Kravitz refused, making off with company trade secrets by changing the account name and continuing to use it.

Kravitz claims that followers have the choice to follow or unfollow at their own discretion, and so can't be considered as property of PhoneDog. (Kravitz' tagline currently reads "People are not property. Love over gold.") He states that follower names are also published, not confidentially held, and so can't be considered a trade secret, and points to Twitter's Terms and Conditions which states that the accounts are "exclusive property of Twitter and its licensors."

Most would agree that work done by an employee for a company during working hours belongs to the company. Ownership of Tweets, social accounts, and other social networking commentary, however, may not be as clear cut. Contractors, bloggers, journalists, and even freelancers with an existing social platform may be hired to offer social commentary on behalf of a company, but ownership of the social platform doesn't automatically belong to the company--nor would it necessarily be in the company's best interest to try to retain ownership. The New York Times article describes the case of blogger Philip Berne hired by Samsung to blog about its products. Berne maintained ownership of his platform and even cleared it in advance with Samsung.

IT strategists and analysts can help to clarify to what degree social networking is benefiting the company by quantifying its value through business analytics, and using this information in developing guidelines for content ownership, overview and maintenance. A social networking plan makes good business sense, and is often overlooked as part of the company's larger business plan. This doesn't necessarily mean that every employee social networking account need be claimed as "company property." Good will is also valuable in business and there is truth in recognizing that employees have opinions that companies can't govern. IT can certainly give structure and guidelines that benefit the company, and in so doing, help to differentiate valuable company social networking accounts from the personal accounts of employees.