Who Do Your Twitter Followers Belong To?

There is a Federal District Court case pending here in South Carolina between a former employee and his former employer over his Twitter followers.

The Mount Pleasant company reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets. PhoneDog sued Kravitz in July, saying for the former writer owes them $340,000 for taking 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left in 2010.

The company says that, when Kravitz resigned, he changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz and kept his 17,000 followers. The company says the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog's property.

I don't know any of the details involving this, but if the Twitter account he had (PhoneDog_Noah) was something he did for the company, as part of his employment, I think the Plaintiff has a solid case. If the Twitter account was simply something he did on his own time, then I think it's a shakier case.

All in all, I'm really surprised that 17k followers is worth $340k. Maybe I should work on upping my Twitter following some.