As 2012 Winds Down

As 2012 winds down there were several major stories that I came across that are worth sharing.

First, not even the former marketing director of Facebook knows how the privacy policies at Facebook work. Randi Zuckerberg is the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg found out the hard way. On Christmas Day Randi posted a family photo on Facebook. She thought only her friends could see it. Boy was she wrong. Shortly after posting someone posted the photo to Twitter. She asked the person to remove the photo from Twitter. When you set photos to only be available to friends, you’re not really setting them to be viewed only by friends. I expect a revised version of how to make photos on Facebook private any day now. Here’s the photo that caused the ruckus…

Second, a local nonprofit executive is suing LinkedIn, because someone put up a LinkedIn profile with his personal information without his permission. I’m not sure why someone would post his private information on LinkedIn in this manner. It leads me to point out that even if you don’t post information to social media – others will on your behalf. If they post with nefarious reasons it can damage your personal or your organization’s reputation online. It can take weeks if not months to clean this up online. Pay attention!

Third, Last week I attended a great seminar at Jones Day that featured attorneys and representatives from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who discussed social media policies. The NLRB has a sample social media policy that you can use that the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel deems lawful. It is found in NLRB Operations Memorandum 12-59. At the seminar they also noted that privacy rules like HIPAA may need to be followed and thus would need to be included in the social media policy.

Finally, as social media continues to change how we do work, how we communicate and how we live, 2013 should be an interesting year. What do you expect from social media in 2013? Let us know in the comments.