Last week's Social Media Marketing class set me thinking - What is your Twitter Account worth? Recently there were news reports of company's suing former employees for 'recovering' (money, the twitter handle etc.) what the company had 'lost' when the employee left the company. In the class we talked about getting 'personal ' on Facebook and/or Twitter. So instead of using a cold sounding company 'handle', a more personal 'handle' with possibly your own name gives a much personal touch. It makes the customer feel connected with the company they are interacting with. But what happens when the employee leaves? Who 'owns' that handle? More importantly, how much is it worth to the company? If he/she had 1000 followers for the 'handle', how much would someone pay for it? How would you price it? No easy answers! It is indeed a very interesting world with Social Media Marketing and lines between personal and business will increasingly blur.
This Mashable article gives an example of a company suing a former employee for his Twitter account -
http://mashable.com/2011/12/26/twitter-court-followers/
From the article:
"Noah Kravitz left his former employer PhoneDog in October 2010 on good terms. Now the company is suing him for $340,000 for the 17,000 followers he kept after he left the the position, valuing each follower at $2.50 per month over a period of eight months."
This Mashable article gives an example of a company suing a former employee for his Twitter account -
http://mashable.com/2011/12/26/twitter-court-followers/
From the article:
"Noah Kravitz left his former employer PhoneDog in October 2010 on good terms. Now the company is suing him for $340,000 for the 17,000 followers he kept after he left the the position, valuing each follower at $2.50 per month over a period of eight months."
The company loses out on this one. They had no policy, no agreement, and he probably began doing it on his own. He should keep the followers because even if they won and he had to turn them over, the followers wouldn't want to follow an account run by such people.
ReplyDeleteWhere it loses is not having clear policies in the beginning. Now it is a lose/lose.
ReplyDeleteI agree, clear policies for the new age Social Media Marketing.
ReplyDeleteBy this number, then the top celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Cristiano Ronaldo's accounts are worth a ton of money.
ReplyDeleteWill twitter accounts become the new .com naming crave that happened before, when popular .com names were bought like real estates.
This highlights the importance of the growing fiels of social media law and digital assets legal regulations. Social media accounts and email accounts are and should be valued just as physical assets are valued- once the value and legal ownership status has been correctly ascertained, they should be able to be exchanged, traded and bequeathed (when the owner dies) just as physical assets can be transferred, sold or acquired as part of an estate distribution upon the owners' death.
ReplyDeleteI was recently listening to an intersting story on National Public Radio, where a person's Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and GMAIL accounts were in question upon the individual's death- who would own these and who would be able to access them, dispose them or undertake a meaningful exchange for them, upon the individual's death. In this particular case, the trustee wanted to be able to access these digital assets, but there was no specific mention of the distribution and access rights to these asssets in the individual's will and estate distribution plans.
When a person dies without a will, his/her assets and estate are subject to probate tax and then get distrubted by the government, often resulting in inappropriate distribution and a reduced estate amount being available for distribution- will the same be applicable and relevant to social media assets ?
These are interesting times.....