Several recent situations are raising this issue:

• The Maryland Department of Corrections used to ask applicants for password information.  After a complaint by the Maryland Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, it now asks applicants to log in themselves during the interview so the interviewer can look over their shoulders to monitor social media use.
• UNC employs an outside  social media monitoring service called Varsity Monitor to watch what its athletes are saying online.  This partly stems from the recent NCAA sanctions for violations in the football program. The NCAA alleged that adequate and consistent monitoring of Tarheel athletes’ social media use would have revealed potential amateurism violations.
• This North Carolina police department job application explicitly asks for usernames and passwords for social media accounts. Bozeman, Montana has been doing this for a while.
• In Spotsylvania Virginia,  law enforcement employees are forced to log onto social media accounts and scroll through while interviewers watch.

Can they? Currently, this is not forbidden in North Carolina , although the EEOC among other regulators are considering legislation to forbid it.  The EEOC has been monitoring the “the snowballing problem” of potentially discriminatory hiring practices based on Internet searches and social media use by candidates.  The EEOC is expected to issue regulations as part of the implementation of GINA (the federal Genetic Information and Nondiscrimination Act).

Should they? Absolutely not.

Why not? Let us count the ways:

1. This probably violates the candidate’s use agreement with the social media site (Facebook is strongly behind this position). It irritates applicants. Even if it’s legal, many will resent it, and they may not turn out to be loyal or enduring employees.
2. You will probably find out information that is protected and that you are forbidden by law from considering in making the hiring decision, like the person’s age; health conditions; race; national origin; sexual orientation; or  marriage, family or pregnancy status, race, etc. In North Carolina, for example, you cannot refuse to hire someone because they smoke.
3. One you have seen this information it is impossible to (check your favorite idiom): ___ unring the bell, ___close the door after the horse left or ___ put the genie back in the bottle.
4. You could be in the expensive and distracting position of explaining to the EEOC or a plaintiff’s attorney that you really didn’t use improper facts in not hiring that particular candidate. The EEOC is cracking down on workplace racial discrimination through a program known as E-RACE, which gives heightened scrutiny to actions that have a disproportionate effect within minority populations.
5. A candidate or employee might claim she was coerced into revealing her password, in possible violation of the federal  Stored Communications Act or state equivalents.
6. It could violate state privacy laws protecting intrusion into seclusion. North Carolina recognizes this tort, although to our knowledge, there are no court cases interpreting whether requiring social media login information violates privacy in this way.
7. This practice is seen as so viscerally repugnant that two democratic Senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are asking Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice and the EEOC to investigate whether this violated federal law.

What can you do instead:

1. Have a social media policy that governs the company’s use of social media and the employee’s use.  This needs to be carefully crafted to avoid forbidding “concerted activity,” which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA),  even if your company is not unionized.
2. Outsource background checks.  There are many rules surrounding acquisition and use of credit histories and criminal background checks. If your company doesn’t comply with the multitude of rules, especially if you do not hire the candidate based on the background checks, you could face federal liability for not following the rules
3. Have clear company policies and procedures outlining the hiring process. Do not deviate from it.
4. If you simply must electronically research a candidate, try to do it post-offer. Have very specific criteria that a third party, not the decision-maker, will look at, so there is as much proof as possible that no bias was transmitted up the decision-making person.

Related articles

• US senators: Investigate employers asking for Facebook passwords (zdnet.com)
• Background Checks Disproportionately Impact Minorities (sandsanderson.com)
• Twitter Job Search —  Does it Discriminate? (virginiaworkplacelaw.com)

“The costs and resources invested by ON A WING AND A PRAYER PRODUCT GROUP into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of  the Company.  We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands. That’s why we are suing you for misappropriation of our customer list and other trade secrets (aka your Twitter followers). Please pay us $2.50 per follower per month of your unauthorized use.”

The first case to address whether a Twitter account is a corporate asset and how to value the account has been filed in federal court. Initial hearings are later this month.

It’s an important case because as more and more employees post material on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—often on behalf of their companies — the social media account becomes increasingly more valuable to both employer and employee.  The company gets an online voice and brand, and the employee makes often significant personal connections that can impact his career.

In Phonedog v. Kravitz, an employee voluntarily quit a technology review company.  At separation, he was permitted to keep his Twitter account with 17,000 followers, but was asked to occasionally tweet about the company and continue to provide content for blogs and reviews.  At some point he changed his Twitter name to delete the name of the company. The relationship later soured, with the employee filing suit for unpaid benefits and compensation, and the company  contending that the former employee misappropriated the company’s Twitter account and followers, and cost the company thousands of dollars in lost advertising and sales.

Without delving into the details of this particular case, here are some reasons a Twitter account could legitimately belong to an employer:

• The account uses the company’s brand name.
• The account was created specifically to communicate with the company’s customers.
• The account was created to attract new customers.
• There is an applicable non-competition or confidentiality agreement.
• What does the corporate social media policy say?

Reasons the account could legitimately belong to the employee:

• The account name does not include the employer’s brand name.
• Tweets were not exclusively about the company (some about the Tweeter’s life and thoughts, some about the company and its products).
• Followers connect because of the personal relationship with the Tweeter, not because of the brand name of his company.
• Twitter followers (and LinkedIn connections) are not secret, so this is not theft of a trade secret.
• The employee is actually an independent contractor.
• What does the social media policy say?

If you are not hearing my subtext, a social media policy is more crucial than ever.  But there are significant hidden issues in the areas of labor and employment law, intellectual property protection and public relations/disaster recovery.  This is a good time to spend money on an attorney.

Stay tuned for more insight into social media policy.

Related articles

• Who Owns Your Social Media Account? Your Company or You? (intelligentdesignsmedia.com)
• Who owns a Twitter username? How to avoid a Twitter account lawsuit (theredrocket.co.uk)

Oh when will they ever learn?
(Pete Seeger – Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Copyright 1961 (renewed) Fall River Music Inc.

It seems that internet and social media titans Google and Facebook have once again, to no one’s surprise, gotten themselves in some hot water with the FTC and some privacy watchdogs again. They just can’t seem to get the hang of this “privacy” thing. Hence the start of this post.

Google has settled with the FTC over a little faux pas concerning its fabulously fizzled BUZZ service. Trying to combine the best of Facebook and Twitter, they announced BUZZ with typical Google style and fanfare, and just to be hip, they phrased their sign up options thusly:

“Sweet! Check out Buzz”

Or

“Nah, go to my inbox”

Minor problem: The “Sweet!” option gave less than a full and transparent statement of the degree to which users’ information would become public. In essence, Buzz capitalizes on all those emails you never deleted, scanning them for connections that you have or might want to make, or something like that. In other words, they use your private information to build a public social network. I’m sure they studied the 2009 Facebook Privacy policy fiasco in detail, but apparently concluded that Google and BUZZ were somehow “different” as in not subject to the same rules and regulations as their competitors. When folks started to realize that their private information was being shared far more than the casual “Sweet – Check out Buzz” message indicated, they were less than amused, but then, as they dug further they discovered that checking the “Nah” box did not have the effect one might have expected either. Notwithstanding a clearly checked “Nah” box, Google dutifully went right ahead and collected all sorts of information about the non-subscribers, perhaps with the thought that they would be pleased to see all that information stored and ready to go once they finally decided to join the flood of ecstatic BUZZ users, now measuring in the hundreds, or even thousands.

For its thoughtful and condescending violation of its users’ privacy expectations, Google was invited to discuss their philosophy of privacy with the FTC in court, leading to a proposed consent order that requires Google to submit to rigorous FTC audits for the next 20 years.

Facebook’s latest gaffe was to introduce its facial recognition capability as an “Opt Out” feature in June. Described by PC Magazine as “Creepy” and “terrifying,” Facebook’s tool works in the background scanning and analyzing the 200 million or more pictures uploaded every day by its 600 million users. By comparing faces in the pictures in its database with pictures in which your friends have “tagged” you, or you have tagged yourself, Facebook develops an incredibly powerful capability to analyze your movements, your activities, and your associations. Of course, by participating in Facebook in the first place, you already give them a lot of raw material, but this new tool goes one step farther. And it’s a big step.

Even if you opt out, how can you know whether Mr. Zuckerman’s elves won’t continue to analyze your photos with this capability. Or, having opted out, what if being tagged in one photo with one “suspect” and in another with a different “suspect” might provide a link that law enforcement officials would just about do anything to know. Did I say ‘suspect”? Sorry – I meant “subject.” Facebook is not a government agency of course. But then, what, if any, new surveillance capability has not eventually been commandeered by law enforcement, with or without a warrant? I’m not sure I would want to count on Facebook not to give up the goods if the FBI or Homeland Security brought enough pressure to bear. In fact, their privacy policy pretty much makes it a foregone conclusion:

6. How We Share Information

 

 Facebook is about sharing information with others — friends and people in your communities — while providing you with privacy settings that you can use to restrict other users from accessing some of your information. We share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you, reasonably necessary to offer our services, or when legally required to do so. For example:

……..

To respond to legal requests and prevent harm. We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards. We may also share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from people violating our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities.

Time will tell whether Facebook and Google use these powerful capabilities for good or evil, but they are here to stay, and growing everyday. Even if there is little you can do to block their intrusive reach, you owe it to yourself to actually read the privacy policies of Facebook and any other site to which you submit personal information.

How carefully are you reading the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies of the online sites you frequent?

If you believe you are the victim of identity theft, here are the Federal Trade Commission’s immediate steps.

A Suffolk County, New York trial judge recently ruled that the private areas of a plaintiff’s Facebook and MySpace profiles could be discovered by the defendants in her personal injury suit to prove she wasn’t injured as badly as she claimed.

In Romano v. Steelcase , Kathleen Romano fell off a desk chair at the college where she was employed. She sued the manufacturer and distributor for making a defective product, claiming permanent neck and back injuries that largely confined her to home or bed, and reduced her quality of life. Yet, the public pages of her Facebook and MySpace pages showed her happily traveling to Florida and Pennsylvania during times she claimed she was incapacitated.

The defendant then requested consent from Ms. Romano to access the private sections of her social networking sites to disprove the extent of her injuries. She refused, and the defendant filed a motion to show cause why this information should not be turned over.

Ms. Romano’s attorneys argued that she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her home computer and that the request was merely intended to intimidate and harass her.

Facebook also opposed the request, saying that if it provided a subscriber’s account information without consent, it would be violating the federal Stored Communications Act. This Act prohibits a social networking site from “producing a non-consenting subscriber’s communications even when those communications are sought pursuant to a court order or subpoena,” Facebook argued in court papers.

The judge found that this discovery request was reasonably related to plaintiff’s own claim of injuries (i.e., she put her physical condition at issue in the court case), and that she had no expectation of privacy:

Indeed, as neither Facebook nor MySpace guarantee complete privacy, Plaintiff has no legitimate reasonable expectation of privacy. In this regard, MySpace warns users not to forget that their profiles and MySpace forums are public spaces, and Facebook’s privacy policy set forth, inter alia, that:

You post User Content . . . on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable.

Further that:

When you use Facebook, certain information you post or share with third parties (e.g., a friend or someone in your network), such as personal information, comments, messages, photos, videos . . . may be shared with others in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in you profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, Marketplace listing or other items, this information may become publicly available.

Thus, when Plaintiff created her Facebook and MySpace accounts, she consented to the fact that her personal information would be shared with others, notwithstanding her privacy settings. Indeed, that is the very nature and purpose of these social networking sites else they would cease to exist. Since Plaintiff knew that her information may become publicly available, she cannot now claim that she had a reasonable expectation of privacy. As recently set forth by commentators regarding privacy and social networking sites, given the millions of users, “[i]n this environment, privacy is no longer grounded in reasonable expectations, but rather in some theoretical protocol better known as wishful thinking.”

Further, Defendant’s need for access to the information outweighs any privacy concerns that may be voiced by Plaintiff. Defendant has attempted to obtain the sought after information via other means e.g., via deposition and notice for discovery, however, these have proven to be inadequate since counsel has thwarted Defendant’s attempt to question Plaintiff in this regard or to obtain authorizations from Plaintiff for the release of this information. The materials including photographs contained on these sites may be relevant to the issue of damages and may disprove Plaintiff’s claims. Without access to these sites, Defendant will be at a distinct disadvantage in defending this action.

In another recent decision, McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway, Inc., a Pennsylvania judge ordered another personal injury plaintiff who was alleging significant impairment to disclose his social media user names and passwords. As in the Romano case, the public portions of this plaintiff’s social networking sites revealed activities that contradicted the plaintiff’s claimed injuries. The defendants were then allowed access to the private areas of the plaintiff’s accounts and the plaintiff was ordered not to delete or change content.

Social media policies have their place to protect the legitimate interests of businesses, but I have to agree wholeheartedly with David B. Thomas of SAS, who sees this as a performance management problem rather than a social media policy problem:

This is not trivial. This is not insignificant. Social media can be a productivity drain. But so can the Web. So can the phone. So can talking to co-workers. So can… air. Chairs. Doors. I once saw a co-worker at a previous job sit in her chair, handbag on her lap, and stare into space from 4:45 until 5:00, then get up and go home.

If people don’t want to work, are bored with their jobs, don’t understand their contribution to the organization, how it affects the bottom line and why it’s in their best interest to do their jobs well, they will zone out. The way they choose to zone out is not the issue.

If your employees are averaging 68 minutes a day on FarmVille, you don’t have a social media problem. You have a performance management problem.

What do you think?

But there can be consequences to public griping, and not just griping via social media. The latest social media tempest is CNN Mideast Editor Octavia Nasr, who tweeted that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” She was fired for compromising her objectivity.

A waitress in Charlotte was fired after venting on Facebook about customers who lingered for hours and then gave a paltry trip. She named the restaurant in her post.

But General Stanley A. McChrystal was also fired. He gave an interview to Rolling Stone, a print magazine founded in 1967, in which he criticized his commander-in-chief and the administration’s Afghanistan policy.

I have written previously about ill-considered tweets and status updates. It is easy to get in trouble online. But as the General McChrystal affair shows, any public comment about your employer can get you in hot water.

The lesson from all of this is that the only freedom of speech granted in the US Constitution is the freedom from the government censoring your political speech. Commercial speech has less protection than political speech, and employers in North Carolina and other at-will employment states have broad rights to fire you for giving your opinion.

They also have the right to sue you for defamation if your comments aren’t true.

This issue gets people hot under the collar. As employment attorneys, we would advise our clients to have current social media policies and follow them to the letter in every case.

7:03 p.m. At #NNPJ. Nice atmosphere. Friendly staff.
7:13 p.m. At #NNPJ. Does anybody want to take my order?
7:17 p.m. At #NNPJ. Anyone? Anyone?
7:35 p.m. At #NNPJ. Grrr… strawberry margarita instead of rocks
7:45 p.m. At #NNPJ. Salads here. Hardly worth the wait.
7:52 p.m. At #NNPJ. H8 it when entrée arrives b4 salad finished.
7:53p.m. At #NNPJ. Crust soggy
7:53p.m. TwitPic of rubbery, congealed cheese.
8:03 p.m. At #NNPJ. Where’s the check?
8:19 p.m. At #NNPJ. Anyone? Anyone?

You create a Facebook Page: 1,000 Durhamites Against NNPJ. Four hundred people join in the next two weeks, and post their own bad experiences.

Then you are served with a defamation lawsuit claiming your online postings have hurt business and demanding $50,000 in damages, plus attorneys fees.

What ever happened to freedom of speech? You have been SLAPPed.

In many cases, online comments are protected opinions or true statements (and as such are not defamatory), but the subject of such criticism files meritless or frivolous lawsuits to try to punish the speaker and get the content taken down. These are known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation or SLAPP suits. About half the states have anti-SLAPP statutes, which allow a defendant to file a motion and stop the lawsuit until the plaintiff justifies the suit. North Carolina does not.

SLAPP suits were often used by government officials or businesses against people who wrote critical letters, gave testimony at public hearings or otherwise spoke up. With social media, however, comments that might have been made to a few people at the local watering hole are now public and permanent. Businesses have more incentive than ever to remove negative reviews or opinions, and some are using SLAPP suits to shut down online critics.

Congress is considering legislation to make it harder to file such a suit. A Federal anti-SLAPP bill, modeled after the California anti-SLAPP statute, has been proposed by two Democrateic congressmen, Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Charlie Gonzalez of Texas.

Under the proposed law, a defendant who believes he is the subject of a SLAPP suit can petition to have the case dismissed and have the plaintiff pay his/her legal fees.

For more articles about defamation, click here.

After much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands in the local and Internet communities, the city re-thought and suspended its policy.

The city instituted the policy to ensure it was adequately vetting candidates.

I think people’s social media sites are clearly relevant to anyone having a relationship with the person (employment, business partner, vendor, babysitter, student….).

While I think almost everyone agrees Bozeman took it too far, what is appropriate information to ask for? Should business partners, employers or schools be limited to what they can search online by the candidate’s name? Can they ask for your user names? What about a list of sites where you are active? Should there be a different standard for a clerk and a police officer, teacher or garbage collector?

What’s so scary? Many executives fear posting something personal (on Facebook) that might prove damaging. It needn’t be a lampshade on the head, either. Perhaps it’s vacation photos from a second home that looks too opulent at a time when employees are losing jobs. Or maybe their support for a controversial ballot proposition proves a bit too vocal. . .

Obviously it’s never a good idea to post “personally identifiable information” that can lure identity thieves and other malefactors. And only a very careless or foolish person would publish proprietary company information onto a social media site. But what about all the stuff in the grey area–the pictures of you barbecuing at home, gin and tonic in hand? The tweet about the movie you just enjoyed? The link to that Atlantic article recommending an overhaul of the banking industry?

Similarly, companies are debating who should “people” the corporate Twitter account, marketing, executives, CSRs, tech help, etc..

Twitter, the microblogging service, which limits posts to 140 characters, has become a favourite of celebrities and digerati. Businesses worried about being left behind are experimenting with using the service to promote themselves. Done badly, the effect can be like watching your grandfather dance at a wedding disco. So should it be left to a company’s marketing department to tweet?

Everyone has a different comfort level about what information to post. It is clearly a good idea to be cautious, as I’ve blogged previously. But when we use social media as a relationship-building tool, to do so effectively means we need to put ourselves out there by more than providing the product/service “name, rank and serial number” (and by that I mean, posting more content than mere brand puffery, PR and cliche).

Personally, I use this blog , LinkedIn and Twitter most often for business purposes. On the blog, I try to post legal updates, commentary on legal issues and commentary on issues relevant to small businesses and their owners (like this one). Each post is an initial remark that is intended to spark an ongoing conversation.

I connect with new business acquaintances and referral sources on LinkedIn. Although many people find LinkedIn impersonal and cumbersome, to me it is only the first step in business-relationship building. I am as active as I can be in groups that match various professional interests, and dialog with people through discussions that often start on the web and continue offline. As we get to know each other, we develop an actual relationship, outside of LinkedIn.

I use Twitter to promote the blog and develop relationships with referral sources and potential clients. I try to keep my Twitter posts relatively business-like and have decided not to post about the whether, what I am eating (unless I am talking about a new restaurant/business in the area) or what my dogs/kids/spouse are up to. I realize everyone has a personal philosophy about these types of post, and “small talk” tweets often lead to strong relationships. Again, for me, public tweets are like meeting someone at a Chamber meeting — if I want to know more, we meet for coffee later in the week for a more substantive and personal interaction.

I have made a deliberate decision to limit Facebook to keeping in touch with actual social friends and family, and not to use it as a business development tool. Nonetheless, I never post anything on Facebook that I wouldn’t want both my mother and our firm’s Board of Directors to see.

I’m interested in how other people use these tools. Where are your boundaries?

In it, an employee put cheese up his nose, and farted and sneezed on sandwich fixings he was handling, while the narrator described how those sandwiches were on their way to customers. He also wiped his butt with a sponge and used it to wash dishes.

The video went viral and generated a public relations nightmare for both the Domino’s franchise and the local franchisee (owner). The employees were charged this morning with felony food tampering, although they have said that none of the tainted food was ever served.

There is a lot here to talk about from the business attorney’s perspective, which I will address in a series of blogs:

1. The Power of Social Media
2. Corporate Damage Control
3. Negligent Hiring
4. Franchising

These employees were goofing around. But imagine what a couple employees with a grudge and a video camera could do to your business.

The videos were posted Monday, and by Wedneday about a million people had seen them. It was spread through services like Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. Readers of a popular consumer protection site that blogged about the video, identified the particular franchise by brief footage shot through the drive-through window, and notified the Domino’s CEO.

Twitter is a service where people “micro-blog” or send 140-word updates (“tweets’) on their activities, interests, opinions, blogs, etc. Numerous people commented on how gross the video was and “tweeted” to their friends, who presumably then also watched the video and “tweeted” to their friends.

Digg is a site where people submit news, videos, photos or other online content for other users to vote on (i.e., they “digg” it). More than 6200 people “dugg” the Domino’s video, which would translate into tens of thousands of people being directed to the video just from Digg alone.

StumbleUpon another social bookmarking site, similarly directs traffic to content, and many thousands more likely found the video that way. I’m sure numerous other people shared this video with their friends on Facebook and MySpace.

Domino’s opened its Twitter account yesterday, but many other companies have successfully used social media to their advantage to respond to customer complaints, launch new products or generate buzz.

I am not an expert on social media, but I would advise my clients to include social media in their overall marketing program. These social media outlets have become very powerful and mainstream. For some social marketing experts take on responding to social media attacks, click here and here.

Another example of how social media can affect local businesses is Yelp. Readers post reviews of restaurants, stores, hotels, mechanics, etc. Until recently, there was no way for a local business to respond to these reviews, but Yelp recently changed its policy to allow business owners to correct incorrect facts. For example, if someone writes a scathing review of your snail souffle, you can post that you don’t serve snail souffle. You would not, however, be able to challenge the opinions that the vegetables were mushy, the service slow or the atmosphere run-down.

The larger point is to be aware of what your customers are saying. Word of mouth marketing is very powerful. And with social media, word of mouth is no longer local.

“Nothing is local anymore,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre says (in USA Today). “That’s the challenge of the Web world. Any two idiots with a video camera and a dumb idea can damage the reputation of a 50-year-old brand.”

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Liz Strauss, a social networking marketing expert, mused on the potential dangers of out-of-context Twitter comments. Martin Zwilling of Start-up Professionals explored the wild-west atmosphere of such social networking sites as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

We have subjected ourselves to a staggering loss of anonymity, and many of us may not truly understand how we appear online. Parents routinely search babysitters, nannies and teachers. Employers and college admissions officers search applicant profiles. And that doesn’t even account for other social media risks: trademark and copyright violations, defamation, invasion of privacy, and wrongful discrimination claims from employees fired for information they disclosed in social media.

I am active on several online communities, including Twitter and LinkedIn. And before I post anything, I take an extra second to consider whether I would want that comment on the front page of the New York Times, or what my boss or mother would think. Others sometimes forget that their off-hand comments can have significant repercussions.

As a business lawyer, I strongly urge every company to think about how it wants to use social media (Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn) as a business tool and to draft a very specific corporate policy outlining how employees should use corporate email, internet, and social media. Or your company may be trying to put the Tweet back in the bottle.