I’ve been asked this question more times by TV execs in the last year than any other: who really owns a personality’s social media accounts? Beyond Facebook and Twitter themselves, it’s a big grey area, but now there’s a case in the courts that claims that a Twitter account is a company trade secret.
It all began when @phonedog_noah, a technology reporter for PhoneDog, changed his account name to @noahkravitz when he left the company, keeping the 17,000 followers. Kravitz now works for TechnoBuffalo, a competing tech site, which he now promotes from his account. PhoneDog sued him in federal court, claiming the account contained trade secrets, “namely the compilation of subscribers and the password used to access the account.” Kravitz challenged the case’s legitimacy.
This week, the US Magistrate cleared PhoneDog’s case to proceed in federal court after refusing Kravitz’s motion to dismiss. (Here’s her 15-page ruling.) PhoneDog is asking for $340,000 in damages, a number calculated by multiplying the follower count by an “industry standard” $2.50 each, then multiplying that total by the number of months Kravitz had used the account. Like the case itself, the math is a big grey area — the judge said she was unable to resolve it, clearing the case to advance.
Today, Kravitz changed his profile to read, “Man, what do I write here? And what’s it going to be valued at?”
This may remind you of Laura Kuenssberg, a BBC editor to took a job at ITV and changed her Twitter account name from @BBCLauraK to @ITVLauraK, taking her 60,000 followers across the street. As far as we know, there’s no legal challenge in this case.
In both of these examples, the original account names contained the brand of the employer. If they were simply in the person’s name — and the company didn’t create or program the account — then there would be no grounds for a case. This is why I always recommend that social media accounts for TV talent be in their name only, not co-branded with their media employer. Let TV branded accounts and personal accounts be separate in name and ownership, but promotionally intermingle at will.
Facebook’s recent adoption of the subscribe feature makes it easier to draw a line between personal and professional. Facebook recommends that TV talent activate subscribers on their personal profiles instead of creating pages under their names, consolidating their identity and making it easier to publish to just friends, or friends and subscribers.
TV certainly plays a big role in building personal social media accounts, and it can be frustrating to see a highly-followed talent take her personal accounts across the street. (What about a “no compete” that applies to social media accounts? Let’s not go there.)
But the value flows in both directions, which underlines the need to look at social followers in the hiring process — an emerging form of currency on the job market. For local TV stations hiring out of market, followers are a leading indication of that person’s ability to grow social reach, which inevitably would be used to promote the station from time to time.
We’ll keep you updated on the PhoneDog case.