A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court
The New York Times
By JOHN BIGGS
December 25, 2011
How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost?
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Noah Kravitz’s former employer, Phonedog.com, is claiming ownership of the Twitter account he started at the company and is suing for damages.
In base economic terms, the value of individual Twitter updates seems to be negligible; after all, what is a Twitter post but a few bits of data sent caroming through the Internet? But in a world where social media’s influence can mean the difference between a lucrative sale and another fruitless cold call, social media accounts at companies have taken on added significance.
The question is: Can a company cash in on, and claim ownership of, an employee’s social media account, and if so, what does that mean for workers who are increasingly posting to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus during work hours?
A lawsuit filed in July could provide some answers.
In October 2010, Noah Kravitz, a writer who lives in Oakland, Calif., quit his job at a popular mobile phone site, Phonedog.com, after nearly four years. The site has two parts — an e-commerce wing, which sells phones, and a blog.
While at the company, Mr. Kravitz, 38, began writing on Twitter under the name Phonedog_Noah, and over time, had amassed 17,000 followers. When he left, he said, PhoneDog told him he could keep his Twitter account in exchange for posting occasionally.
The company asked him to “tweet on their behalf from time to time and I said sure, as we were parting on good terms,” Mr. Kravitz said by telephone.
And so he began writing as NoahKravitz, keeping all his followers under that new handle. But eight months after Mr. Kravitz left the company, PhoneDog sued, saying the Twitter list was a customer list, and seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000.
PhoneDog Media declined to comment for this article except for this statement: “The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media L.L.C. We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”
Mr. Kravitz said the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California, was in retaliation for his claim to 15 percent of the site’s gross advertising revenue because of his position as a vested partner, as well as back pay related to his position as a video reviewer and blogger for the site.
The lawsuit, though, could have broader ramifications than its effect on Mr. Kravitz and the company.
“This will establish precedent in the online world, as it relates to ownership of social media accounts,” said Henry J. Cittone, a lawyer in New York who litigates intellectual property disputes. “We’ve actually been waiting to see such a case as many of our clients are concerned about the ownership of social media accounts vis-á-vis their branding.”
Mr. Cittone added that a particularly important wrinkle is what value the court might set on the worth of one Twitter follower to a media company, saying the price set could affect future cases involving ownership of social media.
“It all hinges on why the account was opened,” he said.
“If it was to communicate with PhoneDog’s customers or build up new customers or prospects, then the account was opened on behalf of PhoneDog, not Mr. Kravitz. An added complexity is that PhoneDog contends Mr. Kravitz was just a contractor in the related partnership/employment case, thus weakening their trade secrets case, unless they can show he was contracted to create the feed.”
These situations are likely to arise more often as social media tools like Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook continue to become a way for company representatives and customer service employees to interact with fans and irate customers.
JetBlue, for example, often answers customer queries via Twitter, although its official policy is to not respond to “formal complaints” on Twitter.
Other issues may arise when companies hire popular Twitter users partly because of their social media presence. For example, Samsung Electronics hired the outspoken blogger Philip Berne to review phones for the company internally.
Mr. Berne uses his personal Twitter account but often posts explicitly about Samsung products and his opinions on the phones he has tested. He cleared his Twitter account with the Samsung public relations department, he said, and he owns it.
“Their stance was that I am entitled to have and express an opinion, but I am not a Samsung representative, and I should make it clear that any opinions are my own and not those of my employer,” Mr. Berne said. In general, social media experts advise companies to tread with caution when it comes to account ownership.
Sree Sreenivasan, a professor at the Columbia Journalism School and the author of Sree’s Social Media Guide, said smart companies let social media blossom where it may.
“It’s a terrible thing to say you have to leave your Twitter followers behind,” he said, talking specifically about media companies that may employ popular Twitter writers. “It sends a terrible signal to reporters and journalists who care about this, and this will make it less attractive to recruit the next round of people.”
He said that many industries had policies that required sales staff to leave their Rolodexes behind, but that these policies were as relevant to social media as Rolodexes are to the modern office. After all, social media accounts are, almost by definition, personal.
He also said that the average Twitter account had less clout than many might think.
“The value of the individual users is very hard to quantify,” he said. “It’s dangerous to overestimate the value of an account to an organization and underestimate what it means for an individual.”
Mr. Kravitz said he was confused.
“They’re suing me for over a quarter of a million dollars,” he said. “From where I’m sitting I held up my end of the bargain.”
Direct Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/technology/lawsuit-may-determine-who-owns-a-twitter-account.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26
Federal Contractor Monitored Social Network Sites
Federal Contractor Monitored Social Network Sites
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: January 13, 2012
WASHINGTON —
The Department of Homeland Security paid a contractor in 2009 to monitor social networking sites — like Facebook, blogs and reader comments on a news article — to see how the residents of Standish, Mich., were reacting to a proposal to move detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a local prison there, according to newly disclosed documents.
While it has long been known that the department monitors the Internet for information about emerging threats to public safety like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, the documents show that its Social Networking/Media Capability program, at least in an early stage, was also focused on “public reaction to major governmental proposals with homeland security implications.”
A department official said Friday that the social network monitoring program did not produce reports about public opinion, but instead focused exclusively on monitoring crises like hazardous material spills, shooting incidents and natural disasters.
Still, the newly disclosed documents show that in August 2009, during an early test of the program, a contractor compiled reactions among residents of Standish, Mich., to the short-lived detainee proposal. It found that most people “were opposed to the plan,” arguing it could make the community a terrorist target, but that others characterized these concerns as “hysteria.”
To produce the report about Standish, the contractor used “Facebook, Twitter, three different blogs and reader comments” on an article on The Washington Post’s Web site, highlighting “public sentiments in extensive detail,” according to a summary of the report that was included as an example in a “Social Networking/Media Capability Analyst Handbook” dated February 2010.
Asked about the Standish report on Friday, department officials provided a series of explanations. After initially accepting it as something produced by the program, an official later said the report was instead created by a contractor as a sample during a period when the social networking component of its media monitoring program was still being designed. It started on a small scale in January 2010 and expanded the following June.
Chris Ortman, a department spokesman, acknowledged that the report was included in the February 2010 handbook, but he said it was there “only as an example of a weekly report format.” No such report on public sentiment was ever distributed as a working document of the department’s National Operations Center, which runs the monitoring program, he said.
He added that the handbook had since been revised and no longer included that example because it “does not meet our operational requirements or privacy standards,” which “expressly prohibit reporting on individuals’ First Amendment activities.”
The report about Standish residents was part of nearly 300 pages of documents about the monitoring program obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Ginger McCall, director of the group’s Open Government Program, said it was appropriate for the department to use the Internet to search for emerging threats to public safety. But, she said, monitoring what people are saying about government policies went too far and could chill free speech.
“The Department of Homeland Security’s monitoring of political dissent has no legal basis and is contrary to core First Amendment principles,” she said.
She also pointed out that while other sample reports in the February 2010 handbook discuss content that is inappropriate and should be removed, the Standish one does not. “This Standish report is being held up, as is, as an example that should be emulated,” she said.
While the names of blog and mainstream news sources are logged in the sample reports, the documents show that such reports — whatever their topic — are not to include personally identifying information; for example, a quotation taken from Twitter would say it came from “a Twitter user” rather than citing a specific Twitter account.
In an interview on Friday, John Cohen, the department’s principal deputy counterterrorism coordinator, said the broader media-monitoring program dated to 2006 and had evolved over time. He said that it had extensive privacy protections and that policy makers had decided that they did not want reports like Standish because they were not helpful.
“Today this capability is focused solely on rapidly identifying and obtaining information regarding events that are ongoing, and providing information that can help inform an effective response to that event,” he said, describing the reports as covering only topics like “major traffic accidents, haz-mat spills, reports regarding suspicious packages, shootings, etc.”
This week, Reuters reported on a department privacy review related to the monitoring efforts that described the news media channels the program covers. The Reuters report received significant attention after The Drudge Report, a popular news aggregation Web site, highlighted that Drudge was on the list.
Many of the newly disclosed documents relate to the department’s efforts to outsource some of its “media monitoring and social media/networking support services.” In early 2010, for example, companies seeking the contract had to spend 24 hours monitoring news media coverage.
They were asked to produce short reports about threats and hazards, as well as “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) ability to prevent, protect and respond, to recovery efforts or activities related to any crisis or events which impact National Planning Scenarios.”
The documents indicate that in May 2010 a procurement official awarded an $11.3 million contract to General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.
One passage in the documents raised another question. It says the program should also compile reports about the department and other federal agencies, including “both positive and negative reports on FEMA, C.I.A., C.B.P., ICE, etc., as well as organizations outside of D.H.S.”
While most of the acronyms stand for agencies dealing with emergencies, border security and the like, “C.I.A.” usually refers to the Central Intelligence Agency. However, Mr. Ortman said it was a typo — intended as “C.I.S.,” the department’s Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau.
Direct Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/federal-security-program-monitored-public-opinion.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26