S.C. company sues ex-worker over Twitter followers

An Internet company has sued one of its former employees, saying the worker cost the company thousands of dollars in lost business when he took 17,000 Twitter followers with him as he left the firm. PhoneDog LLC filed a lawsuit in July against Noah Kravitz, a writer who worked for the Mount Pleasant, S.C., company from 2006 until last year. Attorneys for the website, which reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets, say Kravitz owes them $340,000. The company says when Kravitz resigned, he changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers. The company claims the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog’s property. PhoneDog said Kravitz should pay $2.50 per follower per month for eight months, or a total of $340,000. Steve O’Donnell, a patent and intellectual property attorney, says he hasn’t heard of a similar case—but doubts each follower is worth the $2.50. Read the full story from the Associated Press here.