By Mike Mulvihill

Photo courtesy of PadiProductions
Yes, prepare to defend yourself.
Social media isn’t exactly the place where people have tended to be careful about what they say. It’s Wild West, say what comes to mind in much of the social media world. But you’d best start being careful what you say lest you get slapped with a law suit.
Just this week, Clorox announced it is looking to hire a Social Media Lawyer to help police social media about the Clorox and Brita brands. Citizen Media Law Projects posted just this week about appeals courts in Maryland and New Jersey reversing jury verdicts because of social media use by jurors during trial. And several libel and defamation lawsuits were spotlighted during 2009 — in fact a libel suit was just dismissed in favor of a Chicago tenant who Tweeted about her moldy apartment.
All this adds up to the simple acknowledgement that social media is here to stay and is getting bigger all the time. A January 21 post by Andrew Kipsman on comScore.com reported that, “In the past year alone, Facebook more than doubled its U.S. audience from 54.5 million visitors in December 2008 to 111.9 million visitors in December 2009. It went from being the #11 ranked property to the #4 ranked property. It now accounts for 7 percent of all time spent online in the U.S.”
And it also points out that there is risk and liability a plenty for individuals who post foolish words and photos – just as there should be. But more importantly, organizations recognize that they have risk. And where there is risk, there are lawyers there to do exactly what they are trained to do and do well – mitigate, preferably eliminate, risk.
Mark Greenfield’s recent blog regarding a webcast from the University of Florida sponsored by The Levin College of Law and University of Florida Strategic Communications Planning Committee called Social Media: Promises, Pitfalls & Perils, puts the age old dichotomy between legal advice and marketing/communications advice in context. To quote his blog, “Overall, I felt there was too much emphasis on the risk and not enough said about the reward. While it was billed as a seminar on the safe and effective use of social media, one could have easily drawn the conclusion that safe and effective are mutually exclusive.”
I’ve blogged about it before – as have many others. Control is not something that works well in social media conversations. Companies are afraid that an offhand remark about using a product like Clorox could lead to lawsuits, especially if made by an employee. Granted, these are valid concerns. But it’s going to be real interesting to see how much bad social media will be created by lawyer tinkering. Or how many draconian social media policies will be created that basically stifle any meaningful use of social media by organizations with much to give and much to gain.



Again this year, I got links to dozens of those inevitable posts that come up at the beginning and end of a year. All this got me to thinking about both inevitability about wishes for the future. An email from a friend came also, remindin me of a whole list of things that weren’t around in the olden days (cell phones, polio vaccine, etc.), and it turned out that the “olden” days included the early span of my life – providing even more cause to reflect about just where all of this is going, particularly when it comes to communications.
When Pepsi declined to advertise in this year’s Super Bowl, 


I’m wondering if Facebook will be the first social media network to truly jump into the public consciousness by enlivening the debate about privacy. 





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