Recently in Social Networking Category

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod  writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

So often we hear about bad conduct on the Internet, be it identity theft, distributed denial of service attacks, or online defamation and character assassination.  Well, how about a feel-good story?  Some people actually do the right thing online.  Indeed, blogging now is emerging as a philanthropic force.

Take, for example, Bloganthropy.org, an Internet site which seeks to harness the power of social media to incorporate giving resources.  Its mission is to unite companies and bloggers in an effort to address societal needs.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

You probably know already that Facebook is a huge social networking phenomenon here in the United States, not only for teenagers, but also for adults. However, you might not know that the Facebook rage is sweeping the globe.

For example, Facebook use way down under in Australia is a large component of online activity.

Indeed, according to recent press reports and Nielsen Online, Australians each spend 6.5 of their 26.5 weekly online hours on Facebook. That is an incredible ¼ of all online time for Australians.

Twitter announced this week that it has clarified its Terms of Service regarding what users can expect from the microblogging service.  Of importance to legal tech enthusiasts, is the delineation of ownership of the tweets--or 140-character posts--that users posts.  It's confirmed, they belong to the author.

Could this enable users to copyright their tweets?

It is a possibility; however, at just 140 characters, it will remain to be seen whether there is enough content to establish a protectable copyright claim.  However, considering that poetry such as haikus could fit in a tweet and that users are becoming more accustomed and creative with expressing themselves within the constraints of a microblog, the relationship between copyright and Twitter is at best grey. 

Social media has changed the game of marketing.  It makes a firm more accessible to its clients and potential clients.  And it allows a firm practicing in a niche specialty to inform and engage the legal and general community about particular areas of law.  And where an attorney and firm's time is limited by hours in the day and existing caseloads, social media features give your firm a virtual presence even when an actual presence is not possible.

And though law firms are advised to think critically about possibly privacy concerns before jumping into the social media pool, fear of water shouldn't keep a firm from swimming.  The potential benefits a law firm can reap from being active in social media are still being discovered.  Here are five ways your firm can make the most of social media.

Does Twitter Have Legal Claims for the Hacking and Posting Confidential Company Documents?

In an interesting development for Twitter, French hacker "Hacker Croll" recently compromised confidential information of the Silicon Valley microblogging phenomenon's top executives.  The security breach didn't end there, in fact after the hacker used simple techniques to gain access to the execs' Google accounts, he then retrieved more than 300 private documents stored on Google Docs and emailed the same to various tech news outlets.  TechCrunch, one of the highly-trafficked sites that was emailed, has already started posting some of the documents online.