The world is closely watching a federal case in the Northern District of California where a mobile news and reviews resource company, PhoneDog, is suing a former employee Noah Kravitz (or independent contractor, depending on what news report you read) over who owns a Twitter account that was started in association with PhoneDog, and is now being used by Kravitz as his own Twitter account. The issues drawing so much attention include who owns a social media account – the employee who posts on it, or the employer on whose behalf the employee was posting. The other issue is what value, if any, can be placed on Twitter followers (or, by analogy Facebook likes), when social media attracts people who are portable and not "owned" by the social media account.

As will be discussed more fully below, PhoneDog does not enter court with the best of facts in order to decide these larger issues of interest to employers and the social media community. However, the shortcomings in PhoneDog's case are instructive in terms of steps employers should take to better demonstrate ownership over their social media sites.