Who Owns Online Social Equity and How Much is it Worth?

Dispute of Social Equity Ownership
What were the terms of employment; and the related verbal and written agreements?

A Mashable article, entitled "Company Sues Former Employee for Value of 17,000 Twitter Followers [VIDEO]," involves a company called PhoneDog and its former employee Noah Kravitz. During the course of his employment at PhoneDog, Mr. Kravitz allegedly used company resources to amass some 17,000 Twitter followers. The company and Mr. Kravitz reportedly ended their employment relationship on amicable terms. Subsequently, PhoneDog decided to sue Mr. Kravitz, regarding his retaining of the Twitter followers after his employment ended. Per Mr. Kravitz, the company had agreed to allow him to retain the followers, if Mr. Kravitz would continue to blog about PhoneDog to his followers. Apparently, this agreement wasn't in writing; hence, it was not verifiable.

New Tools for the Social Trade - Gauging the Worth of Online Social Equity.

One point of contention in any such conflict involves putting a tangible value on intangible and somewhat nebulous assets, such as Twitter and Facebook followers. A December 6, 2011 article on ClickZ.com, reports that Twitter's own attempt at selling advertising puts the Cost Per Follower (CPF) at $2.50 to $4.00 for a Twitter follower; and the Cost Per Engagement (CPE - or 'cost-per-click') at $0.75 to $2.50.

Other relatively new companies, such as Klout.com, attempt to place not a monetary value, but a relative score, on the value and effectiveness of a social presence. With a large enough number of companies utilizing central assessment firms like Klout, such a scoring mechanism could become a de facto (and reliable) industry standard for assessing both the monetary and non-monetary values of "online social equity."

In effect, Klout attempts to aggregate the effectiveness, efficiency and depth-of-reach of your social network interconnections. Klout uses its own assessment algorithms to assign a score, called a "Klout score," on a scale of 1 to 100 (100 being the highest/best score). Naturally, those social entities who achieve the highest "Klout score" can demand more for providing access to their cache of "online social equity."

Who ultimately owns your social presence? It's not quite black and white.

The most equitable solution in some situations, such as PhoneDog vs. Kravitz, would seem to be potentially to allow the followers themselves to choose whom they wish to follow. Still, in such cases where the person's job involves building contacts forthe company while, in some manner, using company resources; then it could be argued that the employee's social equity and/or social presence are, in fact, owned by the employer.

Online social equity "transfer of ownership" is flawed at best.

Nobody can dictate to Twitter followers whom they must follow. Even if a court orders a Twitter account turned over to an employer, each follower holds the ultimate choice of whom to follow.

Mitigation steps

Employees always should read and fully understand their employment contracts (or seek legal counsel to assist).

Employers must maintain a well-worded, easy-to-understand social media policy, which specifies how social media equity and presence are to be utilized and controlled - including multiple, properly-authorized company personnel maintaining full administrative access to company social accounts at all times; with appropriate exports and off-site backups of member lists, templates, access codes, etc. Finally, although "non-compete agreements" would be difficult to enforce if followers decided to abandon the company list and, instead, remain loyal to the former employee; all employers should maintain non-compete agreements.