Saturday 14 December 2013

Who Owns Your Company's Social Media Profiles?

A pretty new trend I must say in India. Each and every company wants to have some online presence. Almost all companies have a Facebook page or twitter profile.
Now as these companies have a long reach and gain millions of likes and followers.
Consider if you have some company and have fan page for it, now who owns it ? 
The main question arises is whether Facebook likes are property?

Probably you may think that you have worked to bring likes on the page so you will consider yourself as owner of the page or any online profile. 
Normally according to law Facebook likes are not property but the likes are given certain recognition as property. 

Now what should you do to avoid such Facebook likes property issues? 
1)  Get it in writing
     At the time of hiring someone to post on your social media profiles. Ask them to sign a contract about it. If an existing employee is doing it then you also ask him to sign contract. 

2) Use a company email to set up the account
    While setting up any social media profile use the email of your company. This ensures that your company has the control on the main chain of the account, i.e. email. 

3) Specify ownership on accounts
    If you are already using any social media profile then you may know that you have to give a short description about yourself or about company. So you can give details of ownership in that section.

Conclusion

In short, according to traditional concepts of law- Facebook likes are not counted as property. But in upcoming times we can see them becoming a property and that too intangible one. To avoid conflicts you can use above tips. 

That's it people. I hope you guys like the article. 
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