Who owns your Twitter or Facebook Connections?
As you know, I’ve been reviewing and questioning personal branding lately and I have one final question (or in this case, lots of questions) for you all. Quite simply, from a “You 2.0″ perspective, if you work for a company and you build up your Twitter Followers or Facebook friends from the hours of 8am-5pm (or whatever your daily work hours are)…who owns those connections made during those hours? And as you know, you don’t need to use the company network to Twitter or Facebook, so then what?
You might not like what I am about to say here, but I believe that if a company is paying you to connect with people online on their behalf…they own those connections. Even if the accounts are under your name. I mean, they paid you, right? Or is that wrong? Or is it both? What are the ethics?
Role-based Pre-Existing Accounts
Take my Twitter/Facebook accounts, I am Beth Harte on both. If I were to join a company in marketing capacity and continue to increase my connections while they are paying me, I believe those connections are the property of my employer. Or are they?
How do we address this potential issue? Here’s one thought…
Prior to accepting a job, negotiate that all followers/friends (existing or new) will remain your property and that the company has the right to “borrow” your accounts and connections for the period of your employment.
Does that work? Would employers buy into that? Would we need to prove the value of our accounts before they would accept those negotiating terms?
Non-role-based Pre-Existing Accounts
Let’s face it, lots of people have Twitter accounts that may not have to do with their daily jobs and yet they still are on Twitter and Facebook during the day. What happens if your company finds out or if you get a new job where they don’t see any value in your Twitter/Facebook accounts? Do you only participate after working hours as to not potentially violate company guidelines?
What’s the most ethical way to handle this situation? Or is it not an ethical situation, but a basic “follow the employee rules/guidelines” situation.
New Accounts (Role-based or not)
What if you start your Twitter/Facebook accounts under your name while working for your employer without their knowing, building up your followers/friends on the company’s dime? Or, on the flip side what if you start an account for your employer, but under your name (and not something like “Susan_XYZ Company”).
How can you handle these situations? If you’ve done it, how? And has it worked?
Where is it all heading?
Will we get to the point where everyone will have their own accounts and companies will have to negotiate for access to them? Will it take time for companies to accept these types of “personal brands” and in the meantime you’ll have to put yours on hold? Is it just a matter of employers having smart guidelines in place?
Lots of questions here and perhaps ethical situations. What do you think? Are there any other account ownership situations we should be discussing?
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Tags: Facebook, Social Media, social networking, Twitter, workplace ethics
45 Responses to “Who owns your Twitter or Facebook Connections?”
The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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I think this is actually a little more black and white than people let on. I feel if you go and work for a company that you need to build something that is going to last for the company whether or not you are there in the long haul. While you can leverage your personal accounts to help build the company accounts or create a second flow of information or traffic in the end I think it is in poor taste to continue to build your brand that isn’t going to stay with the company if you left. You can attach your brand to the companies social media accounts but when you are on the clock you should be building something that is a lasting legacy.
I think the issue that companies are facing now is that this is so new that they don’t have any policies in place and they don’t understand the ramifications of what can happen. If people continue to build their personal account because they feel they already have a base and it can be more effective… I think that is kind of selfish and not in the best interest of their employer over the long haul.
As someone that is going to go in and run social media for a company you should be able to quickly build a program to help them achieve THEIR goals. Not just leverage your own personal accounts to help. If you aren’t doing it that is poor long term planning on your and the companies part.
As far as a company that has a ton of employees and you get them on Twitter or something like that, I feel like those accounts are something that they can keep because a forward thinking company has a “main account” that these personal accounts tie into or help spread the word on. These employee accounts are essentially pieces off a larger strategy and should not cripple the main strategy if you lose them.
kevin’s last blog post..An evaluation of auto generated direct messages (DMs) on Twitter
It is one of the challenges now that it is as easy to develop a personal brand as it is to develop a company brand.
You need to set clear rules and keep revising them as the tools and their use changes.
If the company wants to tie its brand to one of your existing online identities (or all of them) you want to make it clear that you take that existing identity with you when you go. The imperative on the company is to find ways to integrate those connections into the company systems.
The best way would be so set up new “co-branded accounts” that are so solely the company’s property and stay with the company after you go. The company will want to set rules as to when you use the personal account and when you sue the company account.
Doug Cornelius’s last blog post..Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act
Beth Now you are hitting at the difference between what you call yo personal branding versus the company. If you are on company time it is owned by the company period. The other part of the conversation is no different than the old question in sales of hiring someone with a “rolodex”. Very often sales positions were awarded because someone had many contacts – the rolodex.
The new question becomes – out of all the connections you have, how many are related tot he work you do? The roles become a bit blurred since we all know that everybody does some personal tweeting, blogging or facebook during the working hours.
It does change the negotiations before hiring though and not something I believe very many sales managers know or understand – YET.
Who owns what contacts has always been an issue – exacerbated by the issue of tracking – hire the right “quality” folks with the right value system and it never becomes an issue – provided the employer is decent as well.
Why should this be anymore cut and dried than anything else related to the wild west – I mean the Internet – good conversation points here Beth
Rick Simmons’s last blog post..Social Media in Philadelphia – maybe
While it would be easy for me to say anything done using company resources and during company time is ultimately owned by the company I do think there are some IP issues here to review.
The people I talk with @kyleflaherty are much different than those I talk with @breakingpoint. The latter is clearly owned by my company, it is their/our brand name, etc. The former is still my personal IP and even though I am perhaps using company resources to build that IP I will ultimately own it since it will go with me wherever I go.
The question I believe arises when people are using too much company time/resource to build their IP (connections) with zero payback to the company. We see these folks constantly on Twitter, seemingly all-day every day. These folks should be held more accountable by their companies for non-work related communication, but it is no different than when they pull the web browsing records and see an employee spending 2 hours a day surfing ESPN.com and filling out their March Madness Brackets. It may be one piece of evidence that the employee needs to be booted, but can the company than take over that person’s brackets and collect any winnings if applicable?
The company doesn’t own the connections, but they own the right to get rid of you for focusing too much time on those connections during work hours.
And by the way, anyone can take over my fantasy football team from last year, we were HORRIBLE.
Kyle Flaherty’s last blog post..Taking the Leap from PR to Marketing
I’m gonna tackle this from a copywriter’s perspective, Beth…
From everything I’ve read (and I’m no legal expert), content created for an employer while you are on the payroll remains the exclusive property of the employer. By extension, then, any blog posts, status updates, Tweets, etc. that are created FOR THE EMPLOYER remain the property of the employer.
The catch, though, is that many of us are creating content via social media platforms that WE own. We’re stealing company time to do it and hoping the company either doesn’t notice or gives us a long leash. That doesn’t always end well, though.
But contacts? Relationships? That’s tricky. Can somebody “own” a relationship? A contact list, sure, but the actual relationships can’t be bought, sold, copied, stolen or transfered. They can only be built, nurtured, damaged and ended.
Could my employer assert ownership of my Twitter account? My guess is probably not because I’m not being paid by my employer to have it. But that probably means I could penalized for working it during company hours.
Of course, the most progressive companies are learning to give employees latitude because of the benefits to the company that come from employees’ social media activities.
One day, we’ll have a landmark lawsuit or two to sort this all out. For now, we’re lucky to live in an ecosystem of invention, innovation and experimentation.
Scott Hepburn’s last blog post..ScottHepburn: @MackCollier She sure is, though she’ll never say it. Luckily, she doesn’t have to. My goal for 2009: Get someone to pay her for it!
Great thoughts you brought up here, Beth.
I’d have to disagree though, with the assessment that the company owns your connections on a pre-existing account. If I’ve spent the time to build up my community on Twitter and join a company and leverage that network and value I’ve built, for the company’s sake, I don’t think they have any right to own it after you leave the company. You offered up your external resources and brought them internally, to help the company, but that doesn’t turn into a transfer of ownership – IMO.
As for accounts that you continue to utilize on the company’s watch, that definitely draws a fine line and depends on the company and their policies on any extra curricular activities while in the office. Some companies are fine w/using twitter, facebook, youtube, etc. so long you get your work done, but very subjective.
Thanks for this post, Beth!
Sonny Gill’s last blog post..Too Much Transparency or Lack of Common Sense?
The question of ownership — you or the company for which you work — seems to presume that relationships are easily transferable.
If someone likes me or likes what I have to say, does that mean that, once I leave the company, they will like the company? Doesn’t that require the company to have someone else on staff whose ideas and values are also appealing to whomever I have built a relationship with?
I feel like my employer benefits from my relationships — through new business or good PR — while I am on staff.
They can have my list of contacts, but that does not mean that they have the relationships.
I’m confused at to what the gyst of this article is. Is it – don’t take the p*ss at work by using facebook, twitter, gmail, etc on company time? Or is it; if you’re contracted to come in and set up a company profile – can you take all the contacts you’ve nurtured with you? If the latter -and translated to offline relationships – your employer would probably put on you on gardening leave and have written into your contract that you don’t work somewhere else where you can utilise those contacts for 6 months or whatever (like a recruitment manager I know did. She set up her own, and took her ‘clients’ with her. Got her in a lot of bother as those clients were nurtured at her previous employer).
It this piece is just about staff doing networking on the companies dime yet entirely social and nothing to do with their employer….well I’m sure MANY people do this. Not to say it’s right…Kind of the modern equivalent of putting all your personal mail through the firms’ franking machine…naughty naughty…
Started to write a whole novel but …
To gain/retain control in one form or another is (IMO) the problem. Almost/nearly everyone is looking for the quick buck, the loophole or the lawsuit. Business/government (and/or the greedy individual) looks to monopolize/monetize (and to potentially/eventually. regulate/legislate) every conceivable possibility.
This should be solved simply by boiling it down to an ethical question/answer. Instead it’s a bizarre kind of brinkmanship.
To try to sum it up … Three kinds of Symbiotic relationships:
Mutualism
Commensalism
Parasitic
@SonnyGill, just to clarify, I didn’t mean the existing followers/friends when you go into a new position, I meant the ones added during the time of employment. And is that something that is negotiated for? Or does it not matter at all?
@Alison Byrne Fields, excellent point. For example, if Ann Handley at MarketingProfs (@marketingprofs) left MP, I’d venture a guess that…most people would follow her at any new Twitter account she set up because of the relationships that were built.
@Rob, well, this post is about a lot of things I suppose…a conversation started. But, the gist is this, if you are paid by a company to either build up your existing connections or create new connections (under your name) …who owns those connections? Or, as Kyle said, do they have the right to sack you when you utilize too much time building up your own personal connections vs. doing what’s valuable for the company.
@Beth – I gotcha. Well, even given that – I don’t think that should (or can easily) be done given those circumstances. Transferring a community that was built while on the job isn’t something that’s commonly done. I think these types of situations are tackled better when a company profile is created, with the addition of using the personal one (a la Radian6 peeps). Something companies and employees need to understand before starting any sort of initaitive.
Sonny Gill’s last blog post..Too Much Transparency or Lack of Common Sense?
You know, we’ve all brought our contacts with us to new jobs but the thing is..they’ve never been so public. I have to say now that I completely covet my contacts and would not want to relinquish that to my employer. But as far as contacts gained during the time of employment…it is absolutely negotiable and if an employer doesn’t establish ownership at the beginning then I don’t think they can expect an employee to give it all back. And more importantly, it’s the communication and connections made by the employee on behalf of the employer that are of value anyway. If that employee leaves, isn’t some of that walking out the door right with them?
Should it depend on whether the development of online contacts is part of your job description?
The same discussions were posed back in the early days of CRM. And I think the common stance was the sales person’s contacts remained with the company (although how many times have we heard of the rolex walking out the door with the employee?)
If your employee is building up their own network on company time, but it’s not part of their job description, they may deserve a hand slap or other ramifications such as blocking sites during company hours (much like many companies have done with MySpace) but I’m not sure the company should ‘own’ their contacts in that scenario. But maybe they have legal rights to pursue them.
In any regard, interesting question to ponder, especially for business owners.
mcolacurcio’s last blog post..Virtual Workers for Anyone, Anytime, on almost Anything
I don’t think it is down to you. I think it is down to the people in your network.
If they feel an affinity for the company/brand you work for, then they will happily continue to engage with them regardless of whether you remain an employee or not. But if the strength of the relationship comes from your personal relationship, then when you leave, that person is likely to go with you.
Gavin Heaton’s last blog post..What’s Your Story. Here’s Mine
The corporate twitter account I started for an employer reverted to a personal account that I own when I went to contract status with them.
Marivic Valencia’s last blog post..I bought happiness
Dear Beth
I fear you’ve missed the question completely. The decision as to who owns the contact and ultimately the relationship with that contact belongs not to you or your company. It belongs (and rightfuly so i think) to me-the contact you banter about above.
I choose to deal with you because of who you are and who you represent. If either of those two variables change, then i must reases and move forwared based on what works best for me and my needs. Maybe we’ll stay conected, maybe we won’t. But it will be my decision and not yours or worse, your employers.
My selfish POV. @TomMartin
Tom Martin’s last blog post..Facebook is fighting the wrong battle
Hi Beth,
A fascinating topic, so glad you brought it up. And a lot of great comments so far. While intellectually, the comment I *want* to agree with most is Tom’s, above, but the reality is, I don’t think it always works that cleanly. I do believe the following:
1.) Social networks will increasingly be a negotiating tool for both sides.
2.) I think a company network should always be under the company name and “belong” to them. 3.) It will be interesting to see if companies start
instituting “non-compete” agreements and how that would work. How can you prevent a network from leaving the company when you leave?
4.) I think the strongest connections occur when networks overlap. So it might be in both the companies and the individuals best interest to maintain 2 separate networks that overlap and reinforce each other.
Thanks for getting me thinking about this!
Lisa Hickey’s last blog post..But can you see the elephant?
Good Morning Beth,
Some of the issues we raise are really old problems wrapped differently. Like, who’s Rolodex is that, the companies or the employees.
For sure, if the company wants their employees participation, the company should provide the platform, facebook, myspace, twitter, blog.
At our small business, employees are encouraged to participate on our company facebook and my space account, but to leave their first name in the posts so residents know who they are talking to. Twitter is a little different, but we do have their name underscore Urbane, Eric_Urbane as an example, or they can tweet straight from UrbaneApts.com
At the end of the day, business needs a blend of all of this, as you never know when the heavy hitter, whom you have nurtured along will become your next competitor,
Eric Brown’s last blog post..PUT THIS IN YOUR ROI PIPE AND SMOKE IT
@TomMartin…you are totally correct! And you’re a genius in my book!
At the end of the day, we all decide with who and how we want to have relationships.
But this was more about how companies will view those relationships… I am just trying to be realistic.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in situations were I was told, say after an agency was fired (just for an example), to no longer associate with them. Well, in some cases I had developed relationships with those people and I kept in contact regardless of what my boss told me. Ironically, I still have those relationships and those bosses are long gone…
Perhaps it will be the same for these public, online relationships?
Full disclosure is the right start. Then the customer will decide who they are going to follow – you and/or the company have no control over that. If it is you they like/trust – they will find you and follow.
Beth
Your old boss sounds like an A$$…but that fact aside, I think you are correct that if as a social media voice for a brand I establish 1,000 contacts, those contacts are rightfully “owned” by the company. However, they are equally owned by me and the reality is, the company, especially in this day and age, cannot stop me from taking those relationships with me.
Yes, the company still gets to keep the “contacts” and likely i do too given the ease at which you can backup or cross copy any data these days, but the relationship, well that as I noted above will be up to me, whether the company likes it or not.
What this all boils down to, and maybe this is where you’re going with all of this, if a company elects to have a social media voice and tie that voice to a defined person, like Ford does with @ScottMonty, then the company better be pretty darn sure that person is going to hang around for quite a while. Otherwise, probably best to have corp avatar that is managed by a person but not directly linked to a person.
Tom Martin’s last blog post..Facebook is fighting the wrong battle
Tom -
You hit upon the key which is planning for departure of your social media voice. You need to plan from the beginning what happens at the end.
Even if @ScottMonty will be at Ford a long time, it is unlikely that he will be there for his entire career. Both sides need to figure out what happens when he leaves. Best to figure that out now than departure time.
Doug Cornelius’s last blog post..Martindale- Hubbell Connected Opens Its Barn Door
@mcolacurcio, that was a thought that had crossed my mind too…how many times has a sales person walked out the door with all the contacts they had. I have known sales people that never input their customers into the CRM system with one excuse after another. Now, I kind of understand why. While they are customers/contacts of the employer, I think it’s always been a safeguard for sales people to hold them close to the vest. Perhaps protection from termination if you will…
@GavinHeaton, apologies…you and Tom said the same thing, so you are both geniuses!
(Always in my book anyway.)
@LisaHickey, great points…now you’ve given me something to think about. Issued non-competes for social networks is definitely foreseeable, but I think they’d end up with a whole bunch of employees who don’t utilize social networks…because those who understands the value social networks would never sign one.
@Everyone, Is there an HR 2.0 discussion going on somewhere?? I’d love to get an innovative HR person’s take on all of this…
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I just ran across this article, which puts a couple of arguments in play (I am NOT a lawyer, nor do I play one anywhere. I just own a business and I defend my IP rigorously.)
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/careercenter/lawArticleCareerCenter.jsp?id=1202430626758&rss=careercenter
If companies generally don’t own your IP except that which relates to company projects, etc. they may not own the social network, per se, but do they own the data in and out of the network that passed through your employer-issued computer?
Probably.
What value does that have? Probably a lot since a good lawyer can get an injunction against you using any of the bits of exchange that passed through the company-owned computer.
So, you own the contact and the account, but you don’t own the conversation.
Gerard McLean’s last blog post..GerardMcLean.com
@Beth I was just about to navigate off, when this caught my eye: “innovative HR person” Thanks for making my morning!
HR people are not innovative as their job is primarily to protect the company from its employees. (I’m not being cruel.. I spent 16 years in HR trying to be innovative.. the lawyers don’t let you be “innovative.” Innovative in HR gets the company sued…)
There was a recent exchange on NPR a couple weeks back with Julie Weber of Southwest Airlines as one of the guests. She asserted that SWA was Web 2.0, they were on Facebook, LinkedIN, etc but throughout the entire exchange, she referred folks to the web site application and shunned any photo-enhanced social media network. There are EEOC laws that trump a lot of this social network stuff and make perfect sense to HR.
I got a sense that Julie really wanted to be candid and outside of her official role, she probably would have been, but no good HR person who wants to keep his/her job will ever engage in an “honest” innovative conversation on this topic. Former HR, HR pundits, HR wannabes, yes, but not a professional HR person.
NPR link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103613245&ft=1&f=1017
Gerard McLean’s last blog post..GerardMcLean.com
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