From the Experts: Read the Fine Print Before You Tweet

http://ow.ly/6CNjq

An article appearing on law.com on the Corporate Counsel webpage written by Joshua Kubicki.

The article discusses the use of social media, and the impact it is having upon the corporate workplace.  In addition, the article states that Google+ will make the lines more blurred than ever between personal privacy and employer's rights to protect corporate information.

As the article states, "With the boundaries between the personal and professional realms now blurred, the question of "personal privacy" vs. "company policy" is inevitably encountered. And with the arrival of Google+, those boundaries promise to become all the more hazy, which translates to a specific and pressing business need for executives to be keenly aware of—and proactive about—the risks social media present. Although significant legal precedents are currently lacking (most related cases are settled out of court), it is only a matter of time before social media data will be the primary focus—if not the cause—of corporate legal disputes. When this occurs, corporate leadership and general counsel will be obliged to offer up any or all corporate social media data at the behest of a plaintiff or defendant, not to mention possibly that of employees as well. And the monetary cost and reputational damage potentially inflicted by the ever-growing mountain of searchable, discoverable data is staggering."

As the article further states, "According to data from comScore, Alexa, and Flurry Analytics, an average person spends 74 minutes per day on the Internet and an 81 additional minutes on mobile apps. Twitter users send upward of 200 million tweets per day. All Internet users combined send a staggering 13,800,000 messages, 5,700,000 status updates, and 30,000,000 comments every hour. Practically every item is potential evidence in a lawsuit. If your company hasn't been called on to produce social media evidence yet, be prepared. According to Gartner research, [http://www.ediscovery-news.com/half-of-all-companies-will-have-been-asked-to-produce-material/] by the end of 2013, more than half of all companies will be asked to produce this evidence in litigation."

The balance between the positive results that social media can cause for a business, pitted against the potential risks, is an interesting issue. The author provides some tips on how to create an effective social media policy.

This issues continues to be a major concern, and is likely to generate much new case precedent over the coming months.

P.S.  You can read my article on this topic, it provides a link at the end of the article to a social media database that shows over 230 corporations social media use policies: http://www.litigationsupporttechnologyandnews.com/2011/09/social-media-in-workplace-regulating.html