These Are My Followers
Well, I think they are, anyway. Litigation over the ownership of a Twitter account is pending in the Northern District of California right now. Here are the facts of PhoneDog v. Kravitz.
Noah Kravitz was hired as an independent contractor to advertise for PhoneDog.com – he appears to be have been successful, garnering over 17,000 followers. When he quit working with PhoneDog, he changed his twitter handle from @Phonedog_Noah to @Noah_Kravitz; he kept the followers. While phone dog sued on four grounds, the most interesting claims are those which require a damages valuation. How much is a Twitter follower worth?
In much the same vein, litigation (Eagle v. Morgan) over a LinkedIn account is ongoing in Pennsyvlania. The plaintiff in the case, Eagle, formed a partnership which was later purchased by Sawabeh Information Services. The plaintiff then shared her LinkedIn account with the new company. After she was fired, she claimed they continued to access her personal LinkedIn account, meaning they had access to her virtual rolodex. For an in-depth discussion, see here. How do you determine damages in the case of a misappropriated virtual contacts list?
While numerous blogs have puzzled over how to best value these things, it does not seem an insurmountable task. In PhoneDog they claimed each follower was worth $2.50. Of course, they don’t explain where they got that number. How much did they pay Noah Kravitz over the course of his contract? Was a percentage of that contingent on the number of followers he obtained? Believe it or not, there are companies which exist to manipulate our “social” experiences on the web. On the link aggregation website, www.reddit.com, each vote you purchase for a submission can cost you fifty-cents. N.B.the bulk discount!
The valuation of this type of “property” is an interesting question, but one that does not truly pose any novel difficulties. First – if you are worried about it, contract around it (this twitter account is ours; your LinkedIn contracts are ours, etc.) Second, if you fail to do so and end up in litigation, look to the market for damages estimates. It exists and people participate in it. Certainly total page traffic, the number of unique visitors and many other things need to go into the calculation, but it can certainly be done. Notably, this may be more difficult to do for LinkedIn contacts. What else can you think of?