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(Image Source: Twitter)
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BY LAUREN ZIMA
ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY
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What?s your worth on Twitter? A new lawsuit could have an answer.
Meet 38-year-old Noah Kravitz -- who in October 2010 uploaded his final video for his former employer, PhoneDog.com. Kravitz says he left the company on a good note.
NOAH KRAVITZ: ?I?m going on to do some other things, but I will remain a fan of PhoneDog just like I hope all of you are and will remain. ...?You can follow me online. On Twitter -- my new Twitter handle is just my name, NoahKravitz.?
Kravitz removed ?PhoneDog? from his handle -- but kept the 17,000 followers he had built up in his four years at the company. Now, that good note seems long gone. PhoneDog has filed a lawsuit in California -- saying Kravitz?s followers belong to the site, not him. The company wants $2.50 per follower a month for eight months. That makes $340,000.
Kravitz told the New York Times PhoneDog said he could keep the followers if he kept Tweeting about the company, and that he thinks the suit was filed in retaliation to his request for 15 percent of the site?s advertising revenue because of his position as a partner. But the case is bringing up bigger issues -- should people be able to keep their followers when they leave a position -- and -- what are those followers worth??The Times spoke with a lawyer who handles intellectual property disputes. He says:
??It all hinges on why the account was opened ? If it was to communicate with PhoneDog?s customers or build up new customers ? then the account was opened on behalf of PhoneDog, not Mr. Kravitz. An added complexity is that PhoneDog contends Mr. Kravitz was just a contractor in the related partnership/employment case, thus weakening their trade secrets case, unless they can show he was contracted to create the feed.??
And when it comes to that $2.50 a head -- The Atlantic Wire says -- hold the phone, PhoneDog. The writer says followers might have been following Kravitz for his writing, not the PhoneDog info -- and that lots of followers are spambots anyway.
? ? an absurd valuation. ? Anyone who has used Twitter for any length of time knows that there are numerous tricks to inflating follower accounts and that the vast, vast majority of users are highly disengaged.?
PhoneDog won?t release how it arrived at that number, and media outlets agree cases like this one will probably become all too common in years ahead.
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