Judge Allows South Carolina Firm’s Twitter Lawsuit

A South Carolina company’s lawsuit accusing a former employee of costing it hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business when he took Twitter followers can go forward, a federal judge has ruled.

San Francisco-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James ruled that Noah Kravitz had not made strong enough arguments to dismiss the lawsuit by PhoneDog LLC. A hearing in the case is set for later this year.

Kravitz worked for the Mount Pleasant-based company – a website that reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets – from 2006 until 2010. PhoneDog sued him in July, saying that, when he resigned, Kravitz changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers.

The company said the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog’s property. According to the company, Kravitz should pay $2.50 per follower per month for eight months, or a total of $340,000.

Kravitz, who now lives in Oakland, Calif., eventually went to work for a competitor website and now boasts more than 24,000 Twitter followers.