Mini Moguls Fight Over Control of a Twitter Account
It's the most adorable tech lawsuit ever! The family of the teenage founder of a popular Twitter account is suing his business partner for squeezing him out. Kids these days.
17-year-old Adorian Deck (left, above) started the Twitter account OMGFacts back in 2009, tweeting weird facts. In less than a year, OMGFacts had gained 300,000 followers. That's when Deck was approached by 24-year-old Emerson Spartz about a business partnership.
Spartz must have seemed like a good fit at the time: He got his start as the founder of the massively popular Harry Potter fansite Mugglenet. Spartz was building a sprawling web empire of viral content for plugged-in teens, including the Twitter account Givesmehope ("FML for optimists!") and the high school dating site Flirtlocker. With Spartzs' help, OMGFacts grew to over 1.8 million followers and launched a website and YouTube account.
But, according to the lawsuit, Spartz is also imbued with that assholishness that hangs about young tech founders like a strong musk. The contract Deck signed with Spartz gave Spartz all the rights to the OMGFacts brand and content. Now Deck, who's only made $100 off OMGFacts since signing the contract with Spartz, is claiming the "predatory" contract was all a ploy to wrest control of the account.
There are lots of unanswered question in this classic tale of start-up betrayal. But perhaps the most pressing: Which one of the Jonas brothers is going to play young Adorian Deck in the movie version? [AP, Hollywood Reporter, images via AP]