SCOTUS to rule on workers’ electronic privacy

According to this article, the Supreme Court will hear a case this term, Ontario v. Quon where a police officer’s communication on his pager was reviewed by the City of Ontario.  Now as a public employee he has certain protections under the 4th amendment search and seizure provisions that aren’t shared by private sector employees.

However, hopefully the Supreme Court can clarify some of the confusing rules and conflicting case law that has arisen in the area of employee’s rights to privacy in the electronic communications arena.

Strategize your legal practice niches

Tom Kane who writes the Legal Marketing Blog, posts about the advantages of pursuing practice niches.   The example he uses is representing companies over their political campaign contributions in light of the “Citizens United” Supreme Court cases declaring such contributions as protected by the First Amendment.

Before someone runs off and  starts up such a niche which usually involves creating a webpage promoting the practice, think about a couple things. 

Do you have a strong list of contacts who you could market such a practice to and do you, or attorneys in your firm, have expertise in this niche field? 

I have seen too many attorneys run after the latest trend and end up with websites littered with ghost town practice pages.

Companies: take a tip from job seekers

This article discusses how job seekers need to post information to their social networking profiles as if the HR person at a company was reading them.  This is the same approach the employers can use with its workers.  Explain how it’s in the employees’ interest to treat their social networking  efforts to best reflect on them as employees.  Can’t hurt at promotion time or in these turbulent days, in case of layoffs.

Are tweets government records?

Increasingly public officials are using social networking for communicating government business to their constituents.  This raises the question about whether these communications are now public records subject to laws about archiving such information.  Its not clear that municipalities, government agencies and the like have considered this issue.

One site, “govliv” offers to track and store such documents – for a price.

Facebook: surrendering on privacy?

Buried at the end of this blog post on how Facebook is changing its navigation, is news that they are allowing users more control over who sees their games and applications.  They promise more control in the future because, “At the same time, we feel strongly that control is an important element of any information sharing on Facebook.”

I wonder if this how Facebook will reverse itself on privacy issues: just tack on changes as a “BTW” to other site upgrades.

Worried lawyers and social networking

I’m perplexed about the fear lawyers have about social networking and online marketing.  Much of their fear gets focused on writing detailed and comprehensive disclaimers.  But there are still lawyers who fear any kind of social networking as a per se ethics violation.

Here is the kind of article that breeds this suspicion.  It’s a summary of social networking panels at the New York Bar Association and the author does a scattershot summary of findings out of context from different discussion.   It talks about attorneys handling cases and concerns they should have about what they say online; it talks about how to communicate with clients, libel dangers and various Bars and their opaque rules concerning electronic communications.  Its enough to make your head spin.

Bottom line:  my advice is to include a brief disclaimer on your website etc. if that’s a concern for you.  I frankly think its unnecessary but it won’t hurt and can ease your worries.  Most importantly, make sure that you send every client a legal services agreement and have them sign it.  That’s how you should do business when you answer the phone and a client wants to hire you and its no different if you receive a tweet from someone wanting to hire you.

Friday Freebies: free partition software

“Magic Partition Solution – EASEUS Partition Master 5.0.1 Professional Edition is upgraded to be an all-in-one partition solution including three main features: Partition Manager, Partition Recovery Wizard and Disk & Partition Copy to solve all partition problems.

It helps extend system partition, copy partition, have better disk space management, do partition recovery to get data back, etc. Moreover, bootable CD supported!”

Link here.

I failed a blog design test

At Social Media Examiner, they posted about “7 Essential Design Elements” and I can claim only four for this blog.

Am I worried?  Not really.  I feel like one of the suggestions, allowing users to share your posts with others,  is something I should explore.  Why?  Because it will allow my content to be more widely shared and generate more traffic.  Here are some of the others I don’t think are so important and why:

*Email subscription form: If they can sign up through an RSS feed, what is the added advantage?  I have to manage a list and find additional non-blog content to send to them?  Maybe that’s good for some people but too much work and too little return for me.

*Use a variety of media: I don’t see why this is essential - if you are providing engaging content in a single medium, that is the test.

*Graphic header with name of blog, tag line and author name:  I pass this test just barely.  I have the content elements but my “graphic” is a standard color banner.  I’m guessing from the intensive and elaborate graphic banner used by “Social Media Examiner” they are thinking of something more compelling.  Two things:  I think the graphic elements of “Social Media Examiner” are the weakest thing about the blog.  The heavy use of cartoon graphics on the both the header and the footer make me think “children’s toystore” and I feel compelled to dismiss the content.  However, since I stream the blog’s content and read most of it in my IGoogle reader, I forget about the graphic elements and focus on the blog’s great strength: powerful and useful content.

Census come to Facebook and Twitter

You can sign-up for Census updates on Facebook and Twitter, watch instructional videos about the Census survyes on Youtube.  I’m sure that’s what people are using Facebook at their jobs.

Companies slow to adopt social media policies

According to this study by Manpower, less than 30% of companies have formal social networking policies and less than 10% have experienced negative consequences from their employee social networking use.

This maybe a good thing on both counts as companies should take their time in developing and implementing a social networking policy that makes sense for their business.  Its not the policies per se but the process, the training, the awareness and ongoing efforts to stay on top of these powerful communication tools.