With the explosion of use of social media for both personal and professional uses I guess it was inevitable that companies would try and own these outlets much as they try to with IPR clauses in employment contracts. Case in point are two recent news reports of companies trying to own their employees LinkedIn and Twitter accounts once the employees have left their employment.

Personally I can’t think why companies have any claims to any of this information. Certainly in the case of Twitter everything apart from the actual login password is completely public (except of course for any Direct Messages). LinkedIn data is a little more hidden of course since its essentially a CV on the web type solution and will naturally contain information from previous roles.

Can’t really see what leg companies have got to stand on, if the accounts are being used to represent the company then yes, I can completely see that they become the “property” of the company, but if not, then they are the property of the employee.