Ascent Solutions

Twitter account theft raises interesting questions

The market in which I operate – recruitment – and the market into which I recruit – sales and media – have a lot of similarities, one of which is just how important an individual’s contacts book is. To say it’s not what you know it’s who you know is not entirely true, but there can be no doubt that strong, established relationships with important people at relevant businesses is a key strength for many job applicants. Through building and developing those relationships, they can move onwards and upwards, using existing contacts to bring new business into a company. At a senior level, the strength of a job hopeful’s contact list can often prove the decisive factor, while even at more junior levels within a company it is of huge benefit if a new starter can provide a way to open dialogue with companies who are not currently partnering with your own business.

In recruitment, the relationships I have with hiring managers and HR Directors at big companies are an essential part of what I do and who I am. Sometimes, they move companies and give me a call in their new role because they have come to know me over time and (hopefully!) they know what Ascent Solutions is about, and what we can deliver.

However, there’s a very interesting argument developing in the legal world at the moment that could have some major repercussions in sales and recruitment. In fact, the repercussions could affect pretty much every industry.

There’s an article on Lawspeed.com where an American court is adjudicating on precisely who owns a twitter account. An employee of a business blogged and tweeted as part of his role, and built up a following of 17,000 people over the four years he was employed. When he left, he took the account with him and changed the name on it (from Phonedog_Noah to NoahKravitz). His former employers are claiming that they ‘own’ those followers, which were gathered as the result of the company funding a social media strategy. They’ve monetised each follower as being worth $2.50 per month (don’t ask me how) and are claiming $340,000 for the 8 months that @NoahKravitz ‘kidnapped’ their followers by tweeting as himself.

It’s a really interesting conundrum isn’t it? How would you feel if you invested significant money into a social media campaign so that you recruited hundreds or thousands of followers to a twitter account – and then the person you had been paying to tweet from it resigned and took the whole lot with them? I’m betting you’d be pretty hacked off – I certainly would be!

Exactly how a court can solve this kind of issue is beyond me in many respects as I am certainly not a lawyer, but it does seem to me that this kind of possibility is something that we all need to bear in mind from now on, and that the best way to do that would be to prevent the issue arising in the first place.

It’s therefore becoming absolutely essential that tweeting art work for work purposes is something that needs to be done from a work Twitter account – one that is owned by the business. When the person using the account leaves, it is perfectly plausible that his or her tweeps may well want to continue to follow the actual person tweeting, and if that is the case, the tweeter should simply be able to advise people he is moving on and then contact any followers he wanted to continue to follow him on his personal account (or his new work account). The company can then pick up the Twitter account as it is, and if people want to continue following (or follow an alternative account suggested by the company) then they will.

There will inevitably be those who feel that the company should own the lot and that the employee isn’t even entitled to say that he or she is leaving and can be followed at a new account, but that older way of operating, closely guarding contacts and information, is something that is being threatened immensely by this bold new age of social media. If a business is seen to be operating in such a way in the current climate, I would suggest that it runs the risk of being perceived as out dated and old fashioned, of not really buying into what social media is al about.

Don’t get me wrong – as a businessman I think that the when you are paying someone to do a job, the fruits of their labour belong to the business that has funded them to be able to do that work – there’s no two ways about it. However, in the social media-driven world in which we operate, I have no problem with people retaining their contacts as they move from company to company. To give the company that the person is leaving no legal right to the details of those contacts however, is VERY wrong indeed, and it could set a worrying precedent in many respects.

At the end of the day you can’t ‘own’ a twitter follower any more than a TV channel can ‘own’ a viewer – people will follow and unfollow whatever the hell they like. But for a business to effectively put itself in a position where they have no legal right to access the information that their employees have gathered as part of their working responsibilities is a very daft thing to do.

I have a funny feeling there’ll be a frantic rewriting of contracts and social media policies as a result of the court ruling – whichever direction it goes in.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter – how would you feel about your employer being able to take over your twitter account when you leave – fair, or not?

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