Mobile phone blog PhoneDog has sued a former employee for taking its Twitter followers when he left.

Blogger Noah Kravitz originally started tweeting as @Phonedog_Noah, and had accumulated 17,000 followers when he left the company in 2010. According to The New York Times, Kravitz claimed that PhoneDog told him he could keep his Twitter account in exchange for posting occasionally. The company apparently changed its mind eight months later, and referring to his Twitter followers as a customer list, sought damages of $2.50 a month per follower for a grand total of $340,000.

The case is sure to be one that is watched closely, given its ramifications with regards to ownership of social media accounts. As reported by Internet Evolution, attorney Venkat Balasubramani wrote a blog post on the matter last year, observing that "copyrighted materials, patents (etc.) generally fit the bill, but someone's Twitter followers or Twitter handle don't obviously fall into these categories."

In the past, companies have tried various ways to "brand" themselves on identifiers like instant messaging names to prevent precisely this problem from taking place. However, the ability to change Twitter name basically makes this a moot practice, a point which was obviously overlooked by PhoneDog initially. Instead of relying solely on bloggers or contributors to tweet, it would be far better for companies to brand their sites by using a dedicated Twitter handle.

In the case of FierceCIO:TechWatch, readers can follow us at @fiercecio to keep up with our posts, or my personal account at @paulmah if they would like to correspond with me directly.

For more:
- check out this article at Internet Evolution
- check out this article at PC World

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