Who owns a media company’s social media accounts? That may seem like an easy answer, but what if the accounts are a mix of the media company’s brand and a person’s name? Take @BBCLauraK, for example, the Twitter account for BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg. She just took a job at rival ITV, and last week she changed the account name (which you can do on Twitter) to @ITVLauraK, in effect shifting her 60K Twitter followers from BBC to ITV.
After she made the switch, she encouraged people to follow @BBCNormanS, BBC Radio’s chief political correspondent. But the account name change raises all sorts of issues. If she built the account on the backs of BBC — under its brand — does she have the legal right to shift it to ITV? Conversely, if she doesn’t convert the name, the account becomes useless unless the BBC can convert it to someone else. But are people following the person — or the content the person represents?
The UK site WallBlog makes the case that people are following the content. “Many people, myself included, wanted to follow the updates of the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent,” writes Tom Callow. “Twitter followers aren’t names in an address book. They are more like subscribers to a blog.”
But the “address book” argument is an interesting one. Reporters often DM sources via Twitter for information, and those sources need to follow the reporter to make the DM possible — and that takes time and effort to gain those followers. So surrendering the account is a bit like surrendering contacts in a mobile phone, which Callow writes is a common argument in favor of letting her switch the account from BBC to ITV.
Meanwhile, The Guardian calls Kuenssberg’s move sensible. “The BBC’s next chief political correspondent could hardly step in and take over the account anyway – that’s not what Kuenssberg’s followers signed up for, and that next reporter is likely to have their own account,” writes Jemima Kiss.
Of course, the easiest way to avoid this mess is to either have one catch-all Twitter account in the person’s name — without the brand — or two separate accounts. And, of course, always have branded accounts for content verticals (there’s a @bbcpolitics account, for example, with 48K followers.) Personally, I’m not a fan of co-branded accounts because I believe that people follow people first, brands second. If a person changes jobs and their tweets are suddenly out of context, well, you can unfollow them, and the branded account remains. But there are good arguments on either side here. Your thoughts?