Twitter user sued by ex-employer for his followers (SMH).

The details are fairly clear cut:

• Employee tweets under Twitter handle that bears both his and the company’s name
• Employee amasses 17,000 followers in 4 years
• Employee leaves company and reaches agreement with employer to keep his account as long as he posts occasionally on their behalf
• Employee changes his Twitter account name to his own name and (not sure how) keeps his followers under his new handle
• Former employer then sues (8 months have passed at this time) claiming Twitter list as customer list. They claim that they have invested significant resources to grow the list and consider it their property.

A ruling has not been made as yet but no doubt many are looking on with interest. I won’t go plagiarizing the article further but I encourage you to read it. Companies should proactively define their social media policy so as not to be caught off guard.

1. Define at the outset if employees will be posting from their personal or company accounts
2. State at the outset who owns the accounts
3. If posting from personal accounts decide protocol of disclosure, e.g.:
   – Employees are expected/encouraged to post and declare affiliation
   – Employees are free to post but any views expressed are their own and do not in any way, unless specified reflect the views or opinions of their employer
4. Set guidelines for what employees can publish, and how they should respond to customers on digital channels. Encourage a conversation internally about the guidelines and iterate them as appropriate.
5. Monitor what is published in the interest of improving the voice of the company online (not for surveillance purposes) and share success stories.
6. Ensure appropriate handover procedure for when employees leave

Related links:

• http://mumbrella.com.au/should-journos-have-their-twitter-profiles-taken-from-them-if-they-change-job-13600

My first Product Mavens found me the loveliest, warmest bunch in Sydney. I am  curious about product management in those areas where it crosses over into UX which is why I am interested in this group. So often UXers come across marketers and product managers as stakeholders yet I am not sure we always talk the same language. The topics last week focused on the marketing terrain and social media marketing at that. Presentations came from a lawyer whose firm recruited on twitter, the developer and entrepreneur behind a  product marketplace and a PR consultant.

Lessons learned from last week’s meet-up in no particular order:

• Leverage channels that will surprise your audience.
• “Fish where the fish are swimming”. Delve into metrics to find out where.
• Research subject focused forums to find hubs of conversation to generate insights.
• Don’t expect high conversion rates (e.g. traffic to your site) from social platforms. 10% is respectable and realistic.
• Don’t invest in marketing before your product, site, platform etc are ready.
• Listen first to your audience to know how to engage.
• Embrace failure. Look back and reflect. Was it effective? Refine practice.

These points aren’t necessarily mind blowing, particularly if you are across social media. But, it is always useful to see examples of how people and businesses are applying tools.  Also, it gave me the opportunity to pepper PRer Roger Christie with questions about research methods and client management. He answered enthusiastically and generously. This was such a welcoming event, and the next one promises a “brain writing” workshop.  I’ll definitely be back for that.

What was most interesting to me, was the discussion and difference of opinion on whether social media spaces like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are publishing or conversation. Damien Damjanovski was a conversationalist; Sam North was of the opinion that as soon as you put something online you are publishing, and by entering the public domain you are availing yourself to be quoted, scrutinised, sued for defamation and have your Facebook photos printed in the Sydney morning Herald. Renai LeMay from Delimiter was a journalist trying to toe the publishing and ethics line. While he would freely quote a public figure’s tweet in an article he would only use an image found online if it was published under creative commons. He added that a journalist should go to the primary source of material they are using to verify its accuracy if nothing else. So at this point in the night the debate became one based on the premise that if we are putting ourselves out there publicly how can this content be used and how do we feel about that use (and vulnerability).

I side with the publishing angle myself and by that I mean that posting something online is a form of publication by its inherent distribution. Having said (and contradicting) that, I feel it is completely inappropriate for a newspaper to obtain a photograph from a social network because that photograph is from an entirely different context to the story. Who is the publisher? This was not explored in tonight’s discussion at the event but it did get me thinking. Part of the reason why the likes of Facebook and Tumblr claim copyright on your material is so that they can have the right to distribute your material which is what they are doing when you post content to them. While I think it is wrong of newspapers to delve into Facebook for pictures to illustrate their stories I think that the users of these platforms should take issue with Facebook as much as they may take issue with the journalist and the newspaper. Surely it is Facebook’s responsibility to protect its copyright as a means to protect its users. What should users expect of the social networks they participate in?

I could go on but I think the debate will continue at the next Digital Citizens event.

N.B. The hashtag for this event was #digicitz. The title of this post is paraphrased from a tweet on that stream.

an employee’s work-identified posts fell somewhere between their little black book and the firm’s email database … they should belong to the company … so a worker could not take all the followers they had built up using the firm’s identity to a competitor.

Click for a larger image.

Tim Burrowes, co-owner and editor cited this example:

“With Rove, he has got loads of followers and when he leaves Ten they’ll all go with him”

I’m not sure this is the best example that Burrowes could have used.  Rove has his own production company and his content is licensed to Ten.

Any employee who feels that they are under surveillance will soon become uncomfortable. What this policy fails to acknowledge is the enormous benefit an employee can bring to his or her company through a contribution to an online community.

A company has every right to protect their client list and their intellectual property. However, there are too many implications to cut a hard and fast rule of ownership of a tweet:

• What if you created your twitter profile before joining the company?
• What if you already had a significant following before joining the company?
• What if the company hired you, in part for your network of followers?
• What if your tweets, work to increase the profile of the company?

Being protective of company IP is one thing, but owning conversation and commentary  is surely another. Could a company lay claim to blog comments? Forum contributions? Facebook status updates?

Focal Attractions is in the business of running social media workshops and seminars for companies. They want to be viewed as leaders in this space, hence the motivation for this PR piece. Paranoid companies would be far better advised to not allow employees to tweet during work time, or to tweet from a company twitter account, attributed to a company email address.

Companies can always set guidelines for twitter use. I can only see a policy of ownership as a way to kill morale. Does your company want employees who just do their job; or, do they prefer ambassadors who demonstrate pride, knowledge and pleasure in their work through their online networks?

Would you want to work for a company that claims ownership of your tweets?