By Leon Gettler
With social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter now so mainstream, companies must develop policies around their use.
IF PARENTS are concerned about what their children post on Facebook and Twitter, companies and government organisations are now also keeping an eye on what their employees, executives and professionals do. It's inevitable because, two years ago, social media were an emerging form of communication but now they are moving into the mainstream.
Twitter now claims to generate 50 million tweets a day, or 600 a second. A Nielsen survey this year found that people now spend seven hours a month on Facebook.
Once upon a time, companies had to develop policies around email use. It's now happening with social media. Expect more to start making Facebook and Twitter part of their business.
The big concerns are litigation, security risks and damage to corporate reputation from people spending time promoting themselves instead of the business, or posting inappropriate comments on the web.
The fundamental issues: How do you control this stuff? What's the risk of reputational damage and litigation? How do you avoid inappropriate use of social media without blowing up employee relations issues? What about the risk of someone soliciting a bribe through Facebook or Twitter? Or the prospect of money laundering through Second Life? Should you stop it?
In a world where for some people surfing Facebook is more natural than reading a newspaper, an outright ban at work might be unreasonable. It's not likely to work anyway, with more people working from home computers and on their mobile phones.
Some of the world's leading companies have already developed social media policies incorporating Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn into their marketing and business strategies, helping them monitor what is said about them online so they can deal with problems quickly and creating communities that share information and increase innovation.
But most companies have not done anything. Still, with companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford leading the charge, we can expect many more will move into the fray over the next two years.
But it is uncharted waters. The Pentagon recently announced - via a Twitter feed as opposed to a conventional press release - that its soldiers can use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Days later, the Israeli military postponed an arrest operation on the West Bank after one of its soldiers in a moment of bizarre enthusiasm posted details about it on Facebook. The military ''unfriended'' him with a court martial and 10-day jail sentence.
Already, social media are showing signs of becoming a litigation minefield. In August last year, a New York court ordered Google to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger who criticised a model, maligning her sexual practices, appearance and hygiene in a blog titled ''Skanks in NYC''. New York state Supreme Court judge Joan Madden correctly ruled that the model was entitled to the identity of the blogger so she could pursue a defamation suit.
In January, a US judge dismissed a libel suit filed last year by a Chicago property company against a tenant who used Twitter to complain about mould in her apartment.
A body of case law is starting to build. Whichever way it goes, no one should assume that the courts will not intrude into social media.
Unfortunately, many companies seem to be ignoring these trends.
A 2009 survey by Deloitte in the US found that while 30 per cent of businesses said social media were part of their strategy, 55 per cent of executives said they did not have a policy in place and 22 per cent said they liked the idea of social networks but didn't know how to use them.
A recent study by recruitment specialist Manpower of 7710 small and medium enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region found that 75 per cent did not have policies in place. They risk getting caught off guard.
So what sort of policies should companies have? Coca-Cola's social media policy (http://bit.ly/5YJRnr) is a start. Running to only three pages, it contains some basic commonsense rules: disclose your affiliation with the company; keep records; when in doubt, don't post; give credit where credit is due; don't violate others' rights; be responsible; keep in mind that local posts can have a global significance; and try to remember that anything posted on the internet is permanent. In short, have fun but be smart.
Commonsense ideas for policies around Twitter would include learning how to articulate the company vision in 140 characters or fewer, without public relations spin, and trying to engage with others including employees, customers and even activists.
Also, companies should make sure they mention the times they stuffed up, with things like product recalls and PR crises. If they don't, someone else will.
The company needs to ask itself several questions and each one will have different answers. How will the business be promoted? Who will be responsible? Senior managers or others? How will it be monitored? What are the specific guidelines? Will it extend to private computers and mobile phones?
The ticklish part comes when employers let their employees know they have no right to privacy in regard to social networking, regardless of whether they do it at work or from home.
That might apply to communications that can easily be retrieved from a company's computer or a system linked into it. But what about material that needs to be taken off a personal email, Facebook or Twitter address, or a mobile phone?
An employee could argue in court they have a right to privacy in these sorts of cases.
It will be fascinating to watch the case law emerge on these issues. With social media moving into the mainstream, companies will be under pressure to develop policies - not easy when it's largely unexplored territory.