Noah Kravitz used to work for mobile phone review website PhoneDog. While there, he set up a twitter account using the name Phonedog_Noah that attracted more than 17,000 followers. But when he left the company he fell out with his former bosses, including over who has the rights to the account.
Now the row is heading to court after PhoneDog sued Kravitz for $2.50 for each follower of his Twitter account. Now the account is protected.
The dispute has clear lessons for other businesses that are use websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“It is important to make it clear in employment contracts who owns social media accounts such as these when the relationship comes to an end,” says Shireen Peermohamed of Harbottle & Lewis in London. “If that had happened here, the two sides may have avoided this litigation.”
She says that companies should also have clear policies setting out how employees should use social media, whether they can have personal accounts and, if so, whether they should make it clear that they are posting comments in a personal, not corporate, capacity. “They should be backed up with policies making it clear that the employee must not post anything that is defamatory or offensive.”
Company policies should also clarify who owns business contacts, says Tom Russell of DLA Piper. Employees who have joined networking sites such as LinkedIn may have a mixture of business and personal contacts, he says, making it difficult to delineate between contacts that can justifiably be said to belong to the company and those that belong to the employee.
One solution is to require members of staff to keep their business contacts separate, and for the company’s IT system to be configured so that it automatically adds a copy of the business contact to the central server.
When it comes to naming social media accounts, Peermohamed has two pieces of advice: the first is to get in early to avoid hoaxers using your name (advice that could have saved News International some embarrassment when it was revealed last week that Wendi Deng’s Twitter account was not, in fact, being written by Rupert Murdoch’s wife).
The second is to choose a name that can be handed on to other employees once the author of the blog or Twitter account leaves the company. A name such as Phonedog_Noah unwisely blurs the boundary between the individual and the business, she says.
Russell says that although some companies may look to block social media sites completely, others choose to embrace them and manage the potential risks of losing confidentiality and control. “The danger is that social media developments may outpace their policies on usage, so the key is to review them often and keep employees up-to-date.”
Last month the UK Law Society published a practice note setting out how solicitors in England and Wales should use social media and how, in particular, use of social media affects their ethical obligations.
Managing IP published a guide to social media for brands in March last year.
