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Is Each of Your Twitter Followers Worth $2.50?

That's what one company suing an ex-worker thinks

By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff

Posted Dec 29, 2011 4:13 PM CST

(Newser) – Do a company's Twitter followers belong to the firm, or to the employee doing the tweeting—and how much is each follower worth? The questions are at the heart of a lawsuit in South Carolina, report AP and the New York Times: An online tech review firm is suing a former employee who ran a company Twitter account. When Noah Kravitz left PhoneDog, he changed the name on the account and kept its 17,000 followers. The company says Kravitz owes it $2.50 per follower over 8 months, amounting to $340,000.

PhoneDog argues that the Twitter followers are essentially a list of customers. But Kravitz says the company didn't raise the issue until after he sued them over unpaid wages. Plus, Twitter followers are often "people who are just gathering accounts and broadcasting their own content—people who aren't necessarily paying attention to anything PhoneDog has to say," notes an intellectual property lawyer. Kravitz's attorney thinks $2.50 is too much. "If that's the case, Kim Kardashian's account would probably be worth billions of dollars of year," he says.

Are Twitter followers worth $2.50 each per month? PhoneDog thinks that's a fair price.
Are Twitter followers worth $2.50 each per month? PhoneDog thinks that's a fair price.   (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
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COMMENTS
Showing 2 of 2 comments
SPHeroid
Dec 29, 2011 4:46 PM CST
Follower on twitter, $2.50 per...... Not having a twitter account, priceless......
wwwonderer
Dec 29, 2011 4:31 PM CST
Wow this is stupid. And yet it will consume court costs. You are an employee. The same way you don't get to keep you chair of lamps or garbage can is the same way you can't keep their 'friends/followers'. If those people are so important, simply give them your other Twitter account(s) and have them follow that. It's like saying my friends used to call me on the company phone. I no longer work there, but in order to keep up with people I need that particular phone.

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