Legal Marketing & PR

In-house Paranoia Runs Deep about Online Social Networking

By Larry Bodine

Not to call in-house lawyers and the people behind Inside Counsel a bunch of introverted party-poopers, but the magazine just published a paranoid report entitled, "Tweet This: How Social Media Could Land Companies in Hot Water."

It recounts the fearful comments of Craig Carpenter, who is billed as the Recommind "General Counsel," but who is titled the "Vice President of Marketing" on the company website. For people who have been living in a cave, the article makes findings like:

• Consumer usage of social networking grew 82 percent over one year.  Duh.
• "We can't escape social media completely."  Wowsers.
• A company can't ban Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, because people will go ahead and use them anyway. Yep -- most people have a smartphone that can access those sites without using company computers.

Fear is a great sales tool, and it may attract viewers to Carpenter's querulous recorded webinar. So here are the traps, snare, slings and arrows of online social networking, according to the report:

• Many people are using blogs and video sharing sites explicitly for business.
• Online networks broadcast to an unlimited number of viewers.
• People tend to proofread Tweets less than emails.
• People send Facebook or blog entries more casually than first-class mail.
• A message's context may be unclear.
• An opposing party could subpoena Facebook and discover what someone said.
• Case law is not fully developed, except for the Supreme Court ruling this year that employers can spy on what employees say on company computers.

He concludes that "we need to get at the behavior, not the method," with suffocating social media policies. He might as well have concluded, "my fellow dinosaurs, there is a comet coming."

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on July 15, 2010 (boomark / email).