Earlier today The Business Insider reported that CNN may have acquired the massively popular CNNbrk Twitter account, which is currently in a heated race with Ashton Kutcher to attain 1 million followers. Thing is, up until recently CNN didn’t actually own that account, which made the story’s coverage on the cable network over the last few days all the more bizarre.
I just got off the phone with James Cox (whose personal Twitter account is here), who created and has maintained the account. He confirms that CNN has in fact acquired CNNbrk. CNN has confirmed the deal (see below).
As of this writing, CNNbrk has over 945,152 followers (and rising fast), making it the most popular Twitter account.
Update: CNN has confirmed that it has taken control of the CNNbrk account, though the company isn’t viewing it as an “acquisition”. Rather, 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 (though I suspect he’s getting paid substantially more than the market rate for his consulting).
And while the ownership of the account has only changed hands in the last few days, CNN says that Cox has actually been working alongside the network since early 2007, only a few months after Cox created the account as a way to send breaking news stories to his cell phone. The two parties decided to transfer ownership as the account’s number of followers began to take off over the last few months (and especially in the last week or so).
Update 2: As a comment below points out, selling “free” Twitter names is apparently ‘against Twitter rules’, though this may only apply to accounts that are inactive. Given the nature of the consulting arrangement between CNN and Cox, it isn’t clear if Twitter will allow users to sell their accounts.
I’m curious to know the details of this “deal”, how much does such a popular twitter account worth!
Yaa.I also want to know what he got from this twitter account. Well I also used to believe that the CNNbrk twitter account is owned by CNN but I was wrong.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Valuable twitter names are the new gold.
I hear that James Cox guy is also on the twitters… @imajes.
Whats up James?
That is a brilliant idea! This guy popularized CNNBRK by automating posts from CNN RSS feeds or something and then sold the now popular account to CNN. Honestly, this guy is the man!
Yes, yes – James is the MAN!
Doesn’t trademark come into play here or paying the owner/creator of CNNbark is cheaper then paying lawyers to settle this IP issue?
Cheaper to buy him than to handle the largest PR backlash in the entire history of the day April 15th 2009.
Does twitter officially allow users to sell/buy their accounts?
Actually, i think it is against their TOS. If they do not do anything about it (and I am sure they won’t), it will open up a big can of worms.
Well if that is the case and if I were the Twitter, I would shut down all generic account names for a while and than make an auction for those names.
They’re having trouble finding the ways to make money on the system. Here it is. Use my idea
)
I think twitter is starting to bore me by being ridiculous and uncontrolled.
Twitter Policy Here: http://tinyurl.com/ctfs82
User name squatting is against the Twitter Rules
Name squatting and “user name for sale” accounts will be permanently suspended. Attempts to sell or extort other forms of payment in exchange for user names will result in account suspension. Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice.
Oops…forgot the most significant line:
User names for sale
Selling free user names is against the Twitter Rules. If someone has tried to sell you a Twitter user name, please let us know.
Thanks for pointing this out. We’re digging into it.
Here it goes.
So are they going to to suspend CNN for that activity as well as Mr. Cox?
Maybe Cox will join to CNN’s web department with his “Twitter username”
Twitter! you are really and really starting to bore me.
The obvious solution is for Twitter to quietly “settle this with CNN” by threatening to disable the account. Seems like a nice $100K payment (10%) is appropriate.
At last, Twitter has a revenue model!
I disagree. What’s to say he didn’t give it to them, only to sell a pen of his for $50k or whatever the number is to CNN. There’s ways around everything. See Credit Default Swaps and Banking Regulations.
who gives a damn. Criminals always looking t find another way of taking advantage of others. Unfortunately our legal system is not helping either
Yeah I think it is against their TOS. You’re not allowed to impersonate another person. Doing something like that clearly would be.
whats wrong with buying/selling twitter names? Its just like buying/selling domains.
Cool deal #anyone interested in http://www.twit....com/internship
He should buy Kutcher a Guitar Hero.
How long until the twitter domain squatter equivalents start hitting full force?
If you play the Kutcher vs CNN game. You are only enabling them to grow at YOUR expense. Be smart, follow you real friends!
You have 1585 friends? Damn son, you might be Jesus! Can we all drop the pretension that we follow people for charity? We all run a “friends” column in Tweetdeck for god’s sake.
Sorry to kill your theory, but I use Twhirl, and you can’t group there.
very funny if money was involved. twitter could have taken control of the account and given it to CNN for nothing (as I understand the terms and agreement according to my fading memory); i guess it creates much better goodwill for CNN to actually acquire the account since the guy was doing a good job of breaking the news in tweets and promoting cnn
I wonder what he got, or how much he got? Stupid of CNN for not having a newsbreak twitter account from day 1.
WHO CARES!?!?!?!?!?
Um, since you’re taking a poll… I do. And if you don’t understand the significance of this “transaction”- you’re not paying attention.
EA games has put this up on there Twitter account @aplusk’s 1,000,000th follower will get a copy of every game EA makes in ‘09 for their system and be featured in @TheSims3, cool
http://twitter.com/seanyoughal
Nice, I’ll update our other of 7 stories on this topic with that. Thx.
yeah, always a good strategy to insult your readers.
just to be absolutely clear, you mean they paid real money for an account twitting their own content [they could have easily take it down by suing it]?
wow. twitter finally has a business model
So, we can start real business with account grabbing!
What about http://twitter.com/nbc etc.?
No, they paid money for the account so they would not have to deal with the backlash of taking it.
999975 to a million. one of the lamest race ever
How’s this? Because CNN took it over they must delete all Followers and start over.
Seems fair to me…
This should be a part of their business model…twitter. They are broker of sale of twitter accounts, as part of their rules & engagements.
People/companies wanting other users accounts…we’ll see more of this…Twitter should have piece of the pie.
How many unfollows do you think both account will see once this silly competition is over? Will be interesting at the end of the day if neither of them have 1m followers once this is over
We don’t know the terms of the “sale,” do we? Money or other valuable consideration may not have changed hands.
Someone may now be on the CNN payroll, though.
And someone getting a job in this economy is a big deal!!!!
I just made @celebrityrace for live updates of the race… it should tweet whenever either of the profiles gain 1,000 followers (or if someone wins).
This really is a big deal. If twitter changed its TOS twitter users could begin selling communities. An example would be if ESPN wanted to direct more traffic to their NHL pages. ESPN could simply purchase the leading Twitter NHL community and subtly redirect links to their pages. This could really be huge! Waiting to hear more updates….
Acquired – for free? What about breach of brand?
“acquired” does not necessarily mean “bought” we typically think of it this way, but all it needs to mean is that the account has changed hands.
I’d sure be curious to know the terms of the transaction though.
The Sun Newspaper in the UK reported http://bit.ly/luop that Beyonce was taking legal action cos she was fed up. Has Twitter got the potential to become a weapon to sue somebody for libel in the same was a celeb sues a newspaper?
They’re going to lose all their followers anyway, since they’re not bothering up update any more – last tweet was 4/12. Makes it pretty useless.
I had always assumed CNNbrk was an official CNN site. So I’m curious, Why did CNN allow someone totally unaffiliated with them to use their name and trademark on Twitter for so long?
CNNbrk has been one of the most-followed Twitter users for some time, CNN certainly must have known about it.
I set up @CNNhln , waiting on twitterfeed to post 1st updates.
I’ll keep you posted on what happens…
Awesome! Make sure you add the CNN background so you look official!
of course they knew about it … he was gaming the system under the watchful eye of CNN
Hocus Pocus ,,,
i registered nearly every US zip code (over 32,700 of them) on Twitter in November, sent Twitter a note to see if we could work out a deal but never heard back. very interested to see what happens here.
Did James Cox violate the TOS of Twitter
If so why was the fake acct allowed to continue ..
http://twitter....7/entries/18370
What constitutes user name squatting?
*using feeds of third-party content to update and maintain accounts under the names of those third parties
This account won’t be very effective until the SMS updates are fixed.
Breaking news updates is what Twitter was made for, when it comes to useful commercial services. Unfortunately, I haven’t received a single CNNBrk SMS update in weeks (months?).
Hooray, Twitter’s revenue model has finally been discovered by James.
James is the man!!
CNNBrk must refer to Breaking News…
If CNN (or any news giant) really wanted to “own” the Breaking News space…they’d buy and build BreakingNews.com into a site where their news resources were blended with citizen journalists from around the world (think the Mumbai Hotel reporting) and then we’d all have a place to go for REAL breaking news…and not have to work our way through crappy articles on dog whisperers etc.
No one owns the breaking news space from a URL perspective…and that really amazes me.
That guy is a lucky man. I use rss feeds to mantain a couple of twitter accounts for my customers. Fetching of RSS is a great way to automatize some twitters profiles without going crazy.
A few days ago I changed my twitter username to DocMagic.
All of a sudden I’m flooding with requests to change my name. Apparently a legal document company in the US called DocMagic wants my username and they’ve offererd me 250 dollars for it. What should I do?
Hmm… I read blogs on a similar topic, but i never visited your blog. I added it to favorites and i’ll be your constant reader.
It is purely negligent and criminal for our officials to tell us this late in the season that they do not have the H1N1 vaccines ready for our children and pregnant women. It is time to call for impeachment of these officials including those who assured our nation several months ago that they had it under control and they were not going to see another disaster like New Orleans flood during the Bush administration…. we need to question these people!!
I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!