Social Media & Games Law Blog

Thank you to everyone who joined us in both New York and Washington, DC for our Social Media Week events - Game On!

Special thank you to all of our panelists: Randy Leibowitz, Mike Scafidi, Tim Ettus, Lou Kerner, Peter Corbett, Jim Gatto, Sean Kane, Lauren Lynch Flick and Tina Kearns (many featured in the picture and video below).  

As promised, we recorded our DC program Social Media Promotions, Contests and Sweepstakes and Social Media Audits. Check it out!

(Part 1) Emerging Legal Issues in Social Media: Social Media Contests, Sweepstakes, and Promotions please click here
http://youtu.be/_Uts2BT542M

(Part 2) Social Media Audits please click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?&autoplay=1&v=_Uts2BT542M#t=2489s

PhoneDog LLC filed a lawsuit last July against a now former employee, Noah Kravitz. PhoneDog, which reviews mobile devices, including phones and tablets, is claiming ownership of Kravitz's Twitter followers. They claim he owes them $340,000 based on an assumed value of $2.50 per follower per month.

The dispute arose when Kravitz resigned and allegedly changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz, to keep the 17,000 followers that he built up since 2006 when he started with the company. The company is alleging that the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog's property. The fact that Mr. Kravitz used the company name in his Twitter handle likely will not help him. However, the company probably could have done more to ensure that they owned the account and followers.The outcome of this case will likely be based on the specific facts here.

But regardless of the outcome, companies should take away a very important lesson from this case. The lesson is that it is critical to address employee social media issues. Lawsuits and their costs and uncertain outcomes can be avoided by having well thought out and clear policies and agreements with employees who use social media in connection with company activities. Don't wait until an issue like this is upon you to focus on a social media policy.

Companies that do not have a social media policy need to fix that as soon as possible. Those that have cobbled one together but without expert advice, need to have the policies reviewed to plug the holes. In short, all companies using social media would benefit from spending a little time having their social media policies and agreements reviewed by an attorney who spends time everyday on social media issues. 

Continue reading "Dog Gone! And their Twitter Followers Too?" »

According to a recent study by OpenDNS (available here), Facebook is both the most widely blocked site in enterprises today and the second most widely allowed site in enterprises today. The study goes on to report that more than 14 percent of all enterprises that block websites on their networks choose to block Facebook, and MySpace and YouTube round out the top three most commonly blocked websites for business users.

The OpenDNS findings are consistent with those reported in ProofPoint's 7th Annual Survey on Outbound Messaging and Content Security (available here), which broke the blocking statistics down by company size:

And there's a good reason for companies to be blocking that access. According to the ProofPoint report, in 2010:

• 25% of US companies investigated exposure of confidential/proprietary info via blogs/message boards
• 24% disciplined employee for violation of blog policy w/in last 12 months
• 11% terminated employee for violation

• 20% of US companies investigated exposure of confidential/proprietary info via social networks
• 20% disciplined employee for violation of social network policy w/in last 12 months
• 7% terminated employee for violation

• 18% of US companies investigated exposure of confidential/proprietary info via video/audio sharing services
• 21% disciplined employee for violation of media sharing/posting policy w/in last 12  months
• 9% terminated employee for violation

• 18% of US companies investigated exposure of confidential/proprietary info via SMS/web-based messaging

So what should your company be doing?

First, have a social media policy. Talk to employees and solicit ideas for the corporate social media policy. You want to encourage all personnel to think and act like an official company spokesperson, but make sure they know they are not an official company spokesperson and cannot claim to be. The company should designate social media representatives and give them limitations what they are and aren't supposed to do.

Identify off-limit subjects ahead of time and share that with your company's social media representatives. Employee training and communication are key to compliance.

Second, have a monitoring policy. From a company perspective, the policy should state that all use of company-provided equipment or services can be monitored, but limit searches of communications/devices to where there is suspicion of misconduct, and limit those searches so that they are consistent with the purpose of the investigation.