I will no longer be updating Reading Tea Leaves and soon there will be a re-direct to “LawyersGetSocial”.
The purpose of the change is to reflect the change in the emphasis of what I am blogging about and also to further brand “DSD Law Site Solutions” as a “go to” resource for issues that attorneys face with marketing online with websites, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like.
So from now on go to:
This article explains that SB 242 deadlocked in the California Senate with a vote of 16-16. There was a big push by Google, Facebook and others in the emerging social networking industry lobby who were successful in killing the bill that would have made it harder for these companies to collect and retain all the personally identifiable information they use to build their successful ad businesses.
There was no mention in the article about the Federal efforts and the fact that they could preempt this California level effort from the get go.
Yesterday I posted about how Jessica Braverman is doubtful about the NLRB’s aggressive stance regarding private employers ability to fire workers for what they say about the workplace on Facebook. She is particularly doubtful about how this will play out in California. So far, she has been right as the latest complaint the NLRB filed concerned a BMW dealership and their sales team in Chicago.
But Are Private Employers Treated Differently than those with Union Workers?
It doesn’t look like it as these employees were commissioned sales professionals. The more interesting question to me is where the line is in terms of disparaging your employer versus discussing working terms and conditions. For example, if employees go to Facebook and complain about personal aspects of their boss – that he is fat or ugly or never laughs, that probably won’t qualify as discussing working terms and conditions but the worker add that he never smiles or says anything nice, that could be creating a hostile working environment. This seems like a slippery slope and what if the intent of the workers is clearly to complain but they include issues that impact the workplace – is that enough to trigger Section 7?
Since the beginning of the commercial Internet, businesses have been looking to push their way to the top of search rankings. Over the years there have been many trends and most of them involve “gaming” the system. Initially, Google’s approach was to reward quality sites – those that people returned to again and again as witnesses by linking to those sites. However, businesses focused on secretive ways to game Google and Google doesn’t like that.
This post to their official webmaster site lists out what they want to promote in high ranking websites. Quality is number one and rather than paying lots of money to create link farms or generate lots of dubious content, here are some things Google will be looking for in ranking your website:
According to this article, in a West Virginia case a juror had befriended the defendant only through myspace.com but that connection resulted in the case being overturned. As a result jurors in another high profile West Virginia case are being asked whether they are “friends” with the defendant on Facebook or other social networking websites.
Is that Enough?
There is a slippery slope here as there are all kinds of ways people could be “connected” on the Internet. They could be friends of a third party. They could have both commented on a blog and even referenced each other with their comments. For purposes of serving on a jury, what is the minimum connection to constitute an online relationship?
Carolyn Elefant, who writes the Nolo’s Legal Marketing blog has an excellent post on how attorneys can handle negative posts on Avvo, Yelp etc. She points out the need to respond publicly but not defensively to criticism. Carolyn reassures attorneys that negative criticism is not the norm, only 17% of Yelp ratings are one or two stars. She also makes the point that there is no point in attempting to bury your head in the sand. If you are practicing law, you are subject to online criticism whether or not you are active online.
Additional Steps
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 