In the frenetic early days of social media foward-thinking companies thoughtfully sat down and crafted sensible policies to help guide employees who had suddenly turned into web publishers.The companies recognized the risks involved, whether the employee was acting recklessly, or merely writing down unacceptable material without realizing the implications. It was still a small area [...]
Social Media Policy Update
NLRB Approved Social Media Policy
The National Labor Relations Board has been ruling on social media policies and making a mess of the regulatory landscape. In its May 30, 2012 report on recent social media cases (.pdf) the Board eviscerates many social media policies that resulted in adverse employment action. In the process it confuses the landscape of acceptable social [...]
FTC, Bloggers, and Disclosure
The Federal Trade Commission is continuing to pursue bloggers who fail to disclose that they received incentives to discuss a company’s products. Back in December, the Federal Trade Commission released new guidelines that specifically required bloggers to disclose any material connections to a product or company they are writing about. The FTC is focusing its [...]

Compliance Lessons from Weinergate
In a tearful statement to the media, Rep. Anthony Weiner admitted he posted a lewd picture of his anatomy to Twitter. Not only that, he says he’s engaged in “inappropriate” online communications with at least six other women. It was just a few days ago that I revisited the Fabulous Fab Rule: Don’t write emails [...]
Materials from Social Media Policies
As a follow-up to my presentation on social media polices at the Virtual Corporate Counsel Forum, I’m publishing the slide deck and links to some of the items I discussed. Social Media Policies Download the Slidedeck: ALM social media policy FTC Action against Ann Taylor FTC Action Against Reverb SEC Guidance on the Use of [...]

Organized Labor and Social Media Policies
While preparing for my presentation today on social media policies, I came a cross this great article by Seth Borden: Labor Disputes Arising out of Social Media. Having organized labor in your workforce will complicate the creation and enforcement of a social media policy. Potential unionizing activities offer similar problems. Employers must consider traditional labor [...]

Update on the Social Media Policies Database
My social media policies database is now up to 162 policies. I troll the internet periodically to add new policies as they become public. If you are looking to draft your own social media policy, the policies in the database are a good place to start. Currently they are organized into these industries Education (5) [...]

Social Networking / Web 2.0 Revolution
This morning I presented to the Association of Legal Administrators. They asked me to give the view as a lawyer, law firm client, former legal administrator and blogger on what law firms should know about web 2.0. I also mixed risks, policies and compliance issues. The crowd was a diverse bunch in terms of how [...]
New Social Media Policies Database
I assembled a collection of social media policies: Social Media Policies Database. So far I have 117 a bunch in the database. That’s a very small number, but I think most companies want to keep their policies private. If I am missing any, please leave a comment letting me or send me an email: compliancebuilding@gmail.com. [...]

Social Media: Policy Formation & Risk Management
Today, I am in San Francisco at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference at the Moscone Center, speaking on a panel about social media policies. I gave a presentation on Cloud Computing at the 2009 version of the Conference in Boston: Evening in the Cloud and Compliance and a presentation on blogging at the 2008 version of [...]
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