It's been about 24 hours since we published the story about Distilled Media's purchase of the Fake Marty Morrissey twitter account (and its 50,000 followers) from Tyrone man Paul Corey. When we published the story, we were looking at it mostly from the perspective of the Banter Panther and his legion of followers, but as a few people have tweeted since the publication of the story, the purchase of any Twitter account seems to be a violation of the social media provider's terms and conditions.
So what exactly is the score on this one?
Firstly, Twitter's policy on name squatting seems pretty cut and dry:
Username squatting is prohibited by The Twitter Rules.
Please note that if an account has had no updates, no profile image, and there is no intent to mislead, it typically means there's no name-squatting or impersonation. Note that we will not release inactive or squatted usernames except in cases of trademark infringement. If your report involvestrademark infringement, please consult those policies for instructions for reporting these accounts.
Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension.
(Bold face emphasis ours)
We were especially intrigued to read a comment on Broadsheet's story on this story by commenter 'tweeter', who claims to be an former employee of Twitter, who claimed that while the buying and selling of a Twitter account is against Twitter's own rules, the practice is rarely monitored.
As a former twitter employee I can confirm that sales of twitter handles is prohibited but when I was there absolutely zero time was spent trying to police that rule. Meh… like.
In fact, there is one well-known example of a media organizations purchasing a Twitter account. Back in 2009, CNN bought the @cnnbrk account, a feed that posted CNN breaking news stories run by a non-CNN employee named James Cox. At this stage, @cnnbrk was in direct competition to be the first Twitter account to exceed 1 million followers with Ashton Kutcher. CNN decided to step in and buy the feed and run the feed themselves. Buying Twitter accounts was a violation of Twitter's rules then as it was now, but CNN got around it by calling Cox as consultant.
Here's an excerpt from a TechCrunch story from 2009:
CNN has signed James Cox to a consultant contract agreement, which included the transfer of the account as part of its conditions. Any financial compensation due to Cox is being offered for his services, which happen to include his Twitter account along with teaching social media workshops, among other things
Now perhaps Corey will be employed by Distilled to give staff advice on building a massive Twitter following based on half-arsed humour, but from our contact with the Banter Panther, it seemed like he received a one-off fee for the account.
Of course, buying Twitter followers is hardly a new practice. Take US comedian Dan Nainan, who told the New York Times he bought something in the range of 150,000 Twitter followers for $424 this year. Sites like Fiverr offer huge amounts of spambot followers for the price of a Budvar.
Clearly, though, Distilled were not merely interested in the status of 50,000+ twitter followers with their new account when they bought the Fake Marty account. They were hoping that the traffic would follow. One Irish online media mogul, Niall McGarry of Joe.ie, lent his two cents on the purchasing of Twitter accounts via his own twitter feed.
@jamzer1 it's a controversial one.. FB and twitter pages should be built up fairly and representative of how popular you are in the market
— Niall McGarry (@MrNiallMcGarry) January 9, 2013
@jamzer1 so on that basis, it is a bit of a stroke.. However, if the guy was willing to sell and they were willing to cough up, then it's
— Niall McGarry (@MrNiallMcGarry) January 9, 2013
@jamzer1 fair game.. A lot of the existing followers might be pissed though and so it could backfire #timewilltell
— Niall McGarry (@MrNiallMcGarry) January 9, 2013
The Sidelines account has been active today, though it's far quieter than yesterday. It's lost around 300 Twitter followers since the story ran and despite the rare protest, like the one below, it seems that the account will continue as is, unless Twitter decide step in.
Really really bad form from @sidelinests (sister of @thejournal_ie) to buy the fake Marty account. Crap anyway, immediately unfollowed.
— Keith Hand (@khand18) January 10, 2013
(Requests for comment from a few people in Distilled Media have not been answered today.)
