The virtual scrapbook is a GREAT display window for consumer companies selling food, fashion or funky fixtures. If you’re a B2B company, however, it’s probably best to keep walking.

Admittedly, Pinterest brings some incredible stats to the table:

• Meteoric growth
• Incredible online referral traffic
• SEO benefits

And, it’s really hard to argue with Google.

Search “B2B and Pinterest” and pages of posts pop up, most with compelling, reasonable ways to add Pinterest to your social media mix. Like this one.

But, in addition to requiring highly creative and visual content not easily assigned to most B2B plays, Pinterest puts two significant hurdles in the B2B path: potentially sticky legal issues and opportunity cost.

What Do You Mean I Can’t Pin That?

The “copyright” is actually a bundle of rights that gives the author the exclusive rights to:

• Reproduce the copyrighted work (make copies).
• Prepare derivative works (i.e., adapt the work).
• Distribute copies to the public.
• Perform certain kinds of works publicly (e.g., plays, dance routines, movies).
• Display the copyrighted work publicly (e.g., sculptures, paintings).
• Perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission (for sound recordings).

So, when you “pin” a photo or a product or artwork that you like, or use someone else’s graphic to decorate your site, you are actually copying someone else’s work, and potentially violating their copyright.

Just because you aren’t making money from your Pinterest site or the copied artwork does not mean you aren’t violating someone’s copyright, and doesn’t mean you couldn’t be liable for thousands of dollars in penalties (if a work is registered with the US Copyright Office, the owner can get statutory damages as provided in the US Copyright Act, currently ranging from $750 per instance of infringement to $30,000, without having to prove anything beyond impermissible copying).

When you “pin” something that is someone else’s work product, they may be very flattered and happy for the publicity — but you run the risk that they actively control the marketing and use of their work. You may receive a cease and desist letter under trademark or copyright law, or a take-down notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Bars who don’t get music licenses often have this problem. So do web site owners who think any image on the web is free for the taking.

Until recently, the Pinterest terms and conditions stated that by uploading or “pinning” something to Pinterest, you gave Pinterest the rights to distribute, sublicense, and sell that content. Copyright owners raised such hue and cry that the site terms now provide for a mechanism for stopping copyright infringement. If your site receives too many complaints of copyright infringement, you could lose your rights to use Pinterest.

See What I’m Talking About?

The other hurdle, of course, is time.

Using any social media channel for effective promotion and brand engagement takes valuable time and attention.

Do you have time to learn and master yet another social media channel? Could you spend the time required for Pinterest to improve the way you use your existing channels, such as Twitter, LinkedIn or your blog?

Here’s a revolutionary thought: pass on Pinterest but revisit the definition of social.

Invite your top prospects out to dinner.

They’ll see value in your business a lot more clearly over a nice meal than they ever could over at Pinterest.

A hat tip: This post was co-authored by Christian Munson, Associate Vice President of CRT/tanaka, our social media agency in Richmond, Virginia. Ever since we entered the social media space, Christian has been our closest ally in developing and guiding our efforts.Follow him at @munson_711.

Related articles

• How to Make Sure Your Pinterest Pins Are Legal (sproutsocial.com)
• You Might Be Breaking the Law, and Tumblr Might Pay the Price (pandodaily.com)
• What To Do If Photos of Your Art on Pinterest Are Misused (artistmarketingresources.com)

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)

Saturday, October 22, 2011 at the Community Room in Crabtree Valley Mall, Raleigh, NC.  

Why should you come?

The Keynote Speaker:

Olalah Njenga is the award-winning CEO of YellowWood Group, LLC, a strategic marketing firm that helps companies own their market and become unstoppable.  She is also the creator of Breakthrough Advantage™, an intensive event to help business owners create unfair competitive advantage.  A member of the National Speaker’s Association (NSA),  Olalah speaks nationally on business topics, including  one-page marketing plans, positioning and differentiation, the business relevance of social media and re-branding strategies to boost  industry presence.

The panelists:

Sue O'Lear

Sue O’Lear a.k.a “MrsFatAssBlogger” is a wife, mom, Nursing student, and writer. Her blog, Did I Just Eat That Out Loud? is a source of humor and motivation for anyone trying to live a healthier life. Cited in the July, 2010 issue of Women’s Health Australia magazine as one of the top blogs for laughter and inspiration, MrsFatass makes weight loss funny. speaks and provides training on a variety of business topics including entrepreneurship, market penetration, differentiation, branding and social media.

Born as a health and fitness blog, MrsFatass.com has grown into a mix of real life experiences, observations, successes, and flops in areas of diet, family, sex, friendship, social anxiety disorder, and pop culture. Read by men and women alike, MrsFatass.com’s unique blend of humor and honesty appeals to a varied audience, including mommy/daddy bloggers, humorists, foodies, fiction writers, and avid reality television junkies as well as the health nuts that were the first home for her voice.

Sue was born and raised in Flint, Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor in 1996 with a degree in Organizational Psychology. She spent several years working in marketing for a for-profit educational company before becoming a full-time stay at home mom to her first child in 2003. She now resides in Wilson, North Carolina with her husband and her two children.

Kelly Duffort

Kelly Duffort is a web strategist with 10+ years of experience in adopting and applying interactive technologies for communicating key messages to target audiences. She is the principal and founder of KD Web Strategies, a consulting firm that advises companies how to take their overall web presence (e.g., websites, blogs, social media profiles) to the next level. Before striking out on her own, Kelly worked in web and communications roles at GlaxoSmithKline, Towers Watson and Booz, Allen & Hamilton. She is president of the local chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, IABC Triangle.

Kelly says, “Whether you love it or hate it and whether you understand it or avoid it, social media is changing the way people communicate – personally and professionally. If you use social media wisely to promote your business, you will be amazed at the connections it enables you to make and the doors it opens for you.”

Leah D. Gordon

Leah D. Gordon is a public relations consultant and knowledge management specialist with over 10 years of experience serving a variety of clients from local government agencies to small business retailers. Leah is co-author of “Knowledge Management for Data Use and Decision Making for International Public Health.” She provides training in communication strategy, image development, building and managing online communities of practice, and effective use of online and traditional media to meet business objectives. She leverages multiple, no to low cost social media platforms to strengthen web presence.

Leah says “Social media allows two-way communication between businesses and consumers in ways we have never experienced before. The opportunities are amazing.”

Donna Ray Chmura

Donna Ray Chmura is a North Carolina growing business attorney with Sands Anderson’s Raleigh, NC office. She came to the practice of law after a career in journalism, with the intent of becoming a legal affairs writer to explain how laws and decisions affect people. Now, she works as a strategic partner with emergent and entrepreneurial businesses to analyze the business, legal and capital needs of her clients, and plan for the future. Coming from a family business background, she also enjoys working with start-ups to structure a strong legal foundation.

She is an author of NC Law Life, and is active on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Organized by Beverly Mahone, founder of Boomer Diva Nation, the summit will be moderated by executive life coach Martin Brossman.

Cooks Source magazine was designed to support local food-oriented businesses in Western Massachusetts. The magazine had a Facebook page where it electronically reposted its printed articles.

After writer Monica Gaudio posted a rather off-hand blog entry on her interaction with the Cooks Source editor, the story went viral on the Internet, largely because of the editor’s pompous and condescending attitude. Thousands of people researched Cooks Source online and found its Facebook page. Numerous people “liked” the Cooks Source Facebook page for the sole purpose of criticizing editor Judith Griggs and posting insults (some of which were quite clever, others of which were crude and mean).

In later electronic communications, Griggs complained that her Facebook page had been “hacked.” Hacking is breaking into a computer to gain unauthorized access. Often hackers are trying to steal information. In this case, the Facebook page performed as it was designed. Consumers felt a desire to connect with a certain business (i.e., Cooks Source), “liked” the page and then posted comments. Unfortunately, most of these comments were critical of Griggs, but this is not hacking. Social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs) is designed to be an interactive forum with customers, not an electronic bulletin board where a company posts press releases and stifles all criticism. Companies who misunderstand the interactiveness are often ill-prepared for the fall-out.

Griggs lost control of her Facebook page. She didn’t respond to negative comments, which further infuriated her critics. I have heard this called “slacking” meaning that the Facebook owner “slacked off” (shirked) monitoring social media. When food conglomerate and chocolatier, Nestle, dipped a toe into social media with a Facebook page, it was flooded with critical comments about its sustainability practices and marketing practices for infant formula in the Third World. Corporate responded with a warning to stop posting altered versions of the Company’s logo. While this alteration might rise to copyright or trademark infringement, the legal response needed to be tempered by extremely savvy marketing/public relations advice.

Both of these companies entered social media without a plan, or, quite frankly, a clue, and were powerless to repel the social attack. The plan needs to encompass both legal and marketing experts, and a company needs to learn from Cooks Source, Nestle, and Domino’s that social media can be used against you. Companies need to understand the particular media, the users, and the unwritten rules of any community, as well as the underlying legal and marketing concepts. On the legal end, companies using social media also need a firm understanding of copyrights, trademarks, defamation, and right to privacy. Social attacks require coordinated responses from the lawyer and the PR agency.

More on Internet caching later.

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.

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.