This isn’t the first conflict over who owns your Twitter account, and it certainly won’t be the last. When Rick Sanchez left CNN he kept his account but changed the name. This is what Kravitz did when he left PhoneDog.
What this means to me is that now more than ever you need to get your social media policies firmed up and clarified. As in, start a conversation with your corporation counsel asap.
Dell’s senior legal counsel Ryan Garcia recommends that any firm creating a social media policy take the time to understand how they are going to be using social media before they put anything together. “You also want to cover both extreme cases, where someone is an experience social media user before they came to the company, as well as a neophyte who learns while on the job.” There is risk involved in both situations: a Twitter pro could get sued, as in the case of PhoneDog, from his previous employer. Or a newbie could garner a bunch of followers and then take this newfound popularity to a competitor.