Legal Risks of 2.0

“With great power comes great responsibility“

With all of these Web 2.0 tools and social media sites popping up, what rules are being put in place to accommodate them?

One example I know well about is how they handle social media policies in Education Queensland, because I work in two state schools as a Technician.

There is two sets of policies. One is about how Teachers are to not communicate with students via social media, and the other is for managing a facebook page for the school.

When it comes to Teacher/Student relations, it is to be strictly professional and for one to add another on facebook as a ‘friend’ is blurring the lines. “If you use internet social networks in your personal time you must ensure that the content is appropriate and private, and that you restrict access to specific people who are not students.” (link)

When it comes to managing a facebook page for the school, the social media policy states many rules. It also states that it is a 24 hour/7 day week job of monitoring this page and that it also requires monitoring on the holidays, and how the administrator has to get permission from the principal before making any posts or deletion of posts and comments. The page is to not be linked to the administrators personal facebook page in any way.

Its actually an interesting read – I suggest you take a look at it in the social media policy link above.

Another issue with 2.0 in schools is when there is harassment of students or teachers. On this site, they talk about how students are using social media sites inappropriately. Students would be talking about other students or teachers in a derogatory way which would make teachers and students feel unsafe to go to school.

There was talk of how the students should not be allowed their on accounts on these social media sites, but in the end they implemented a social media policy at the school that students are to not mention the school at all.

If your place of business does not have any social media policies yet – why not bring this idea to your employer and see what they have to say.

If you need some more information on types of social media policies, try some of these blogs; Karla, Josh, Nick.

~Daniel  Keirnan

2.0 – Yes or No

Recap – Enterprise 2.0 is when a business has implemented social media tools into how the business runs.

So here is the real question:

Enterprise 2.0 – Yes or No?

In this post I will go over the pros and cons for why a business should implement social media into there core structure.

First the disadvantages:

• Reliability and Loss of control – Since social media is not hosted by the business (except in some cases – a wiki), they have less control over users and how the service is run.
• Reputation – “What goes online, stays online” is very true in the sense that if a customer posts that the business has wronged them with a faulty product or poor service, it can be hard to remove due to the policies put in place by the social media service. Even an employee could post something online about the company that is bad
• Productivity – Implementing a new service can initially slow down productivity and because of this, not be fully embraced by all of the employees, decreasing productivity even more.

Advantages:

• Efficiency and Productivity – Once the users have gotten used to the new social media tools, their productivity will improve dramatically as they have a more efficient ways of communicating and collaborating with each other.
• Knowledge – A wiki is a great way to allow a database of knowledge to be known to every member of the organisation. Even certain knowledge to the customers to help increase customer faith in your product/service and the company itself.
• Reputation – Social media tools are excellent for increasing the reputation of a business by allowing them to be seen doing something of worth – like improving a product/service or partnering up with a charity organisation. Social media is basically free advertisement.
• Staff engagement – The use of wikis or other social media tools like Google Docs. Allowing the staff to engage each other can further innovations to happen that not have normally occurred.

Adopting Web 2.0 tools and joining the Enterprise 2.0 community has helped many businesses like Colgate,  McDonalds, IBM and even NASA. An associate of mine, Nicholas Burge, has more information about how Enterprise 2.0 has helped the IBM and NASA. For a list of some Enterprise 2.0 Success stories, check out this link to a blog post by Pete Wildermuth.

~Daniel Keirnan