The Social Network is on Holiday

It's funny, isn't it. We even take a holiday from blogging and Tweeting at Christmas time. Now why would we do that?

Just out of morbid curiosity I turned on my Twitter this morning to see that the number of Tweets since Xmas Day was minimal. Emma James, the Bucks Naturist and all round fitness superstar was chirping like a bird about her local area, Shane Warne was lovey-doveying about Elizabeth Hurley, 'Bumble' was watching Poirot, Aggers was watching Downton Abbey and Rory McIlroy will be in Thailand with his gorgeous girlfriend. Mercifully the usual rubbish was missing and I could actually read some things that were vaguely interesting.

But blogging was down too as everyone focused on Christmas festivities, eating and drinking. It's the way it should be, I might think. But why would people suddenly be quiet over the Christmas period when they probably have more to say than at any other time? Why would they forsake their computer or phone when it is only yards away?

We know that roads are clearer, we expect it. We know that families are together - but so what? Tweeting takes just a  second.

Wait a minute. The workplace is empty. 

Ah, so that's it. We Tweet and blog only when we are meant to be working, is that it? We take a family holiday and we stop. Now isn't that a thing?

I can only guess at the volume decrease but if my Twitter was registering over 10% of the normal volume of Tweets then I would be overcalling it. The same for blogs. 

So what, I hear you say. This is serious, is my reply.

From an advertising point of view, TV takes enormous share at Christmas time as viewing figures go higher so there are some incredibly expensive shows to sponsor. Advertisers make money at Christmas time - in fact, any time when families are together. Weekends, national holidays etc. 

It's the exact opposite for social media. I have no idea about Facebook as it is a noise to me but for the ones I use, I see no activity at all. That will be for the best part of two weeks.

That's a serious consideration in this valuation tomfoolery. Social media is at its peak during working hours and non holidays. It's value for users seems to be at its height at times when they should be working.

If an employer is reading this, they might consider filtering all social media sites from employees on their networks. It's a productivity theft system. Or they might have a light bulb above their heads and think, 'How can I turn this to my advantage?'.

But for those whizz kids and their investors at these social media sites, I might just be a little concerned that such a dramatic drop occurs at such times.

Happy, Happy Christmas everyone.

From Crackberries to Facebook Anonymous

Addiction to technology or devices is reality even if much of it is in the virtual world. That sounds either trite or daft or both but I think you know what I mean. 

There was a time when you could see the bowed heads of grown men staring into their laps apparently fiddling with their genitals - what a relief when you found out that the reason they haven't being paying attention was because they were playing on their Blackberries. Imagine our surprise to find some weren't - but that's another story.

In an office of someone I know, the secretary in the small team used Facebook so much during the day to communicate with few friends that her manager, sitting next to her and watching her habits, sent her a Facebook message to make some tea. The person in question without saying anything simply got up, made some tea for everyone then sat down and resumed her Facebook 'work'. The manager sent another message to thank her and she even responded to that. It was the tail end of what had been an unhappy employment experience for both parties.

I worked with a company where they had 90 people on a main sales floor and everyone of them used Facebook to communicate to people not more then a few feet from them. It was probably the most unproductive sales team I have ever come across.

This isn't necessarily an age thing as older employees are as likely to be heavy Facebook users as younger ones but I am sure the statistics will prove a point about the new generation of workers. Many companies are starting to formulate policies on use of such services like Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn during business hours. We have already had a landmark legal case where an employee who used LinkedIn for work was found to have violated client confidentiality and non compete clauses in their contract of employment by simply using the same LinkedIn account at a new firm.

But addiction is more than that. Genuinely, many of the new social media applications are fast becoming like the chat sites at the turn of the millennium where many employees got sucked into nattering inanely online during work hours. Instant Messaging is still an issue. For many companies, the recording of IM messages remains a taboo subject but should there be legal cases surrounding such communications such as in employee tribunals or libel actions, these forms of communications are just as likely to be called as evidence as emails.

We have seen the use of social media grow to make legal issues complex such as the 'outing' of identities in super injunction cases and the jurisdiction of law is not at all clear. But addiction comes in many forms and it could be argued that simply believing that what you say in 'private' on Facebook, Twitter or any other form of interaction not controlled by your company directly, is your own business.

It is not at all clear whether that is the case or will continue to be so. There was a recent case of a Dutch website which hosts a community of kids and teachers and some of the anonymous accusations against students and their teachers have been far beyond good taste and into the realms of libel and slander. The site in question basically says that you should comply to the law of the land where you are based when using the service. Which sort of makes a mockery of Terms of Service. It also means that legal issues are reflected at the source of the issue.

Addiction to social media has relevance beyond non-productivity in work time which is a huge issue in itself but it has potential deep legal ramifications. As users naively continue to chirp away merrily on any number of internet hosted sites they are potentially storing up some problems.

What they say while sat at work, during work hours may never be as private and free to say as they think. 

Here's gut feel prediction for 2012, I think one or other of the major social media sites may get involved in at least one corporate case where an employee has compromised the professionalism of their company by saying things they shouldn't have - either about fellow employees or managers or rival firms. I predict we may get a few landmark cases on this in the UK soon.

How do you prevent it? Well I think you can have company policies and that's fine for those people who are fully attached to the corporate network. But for those attached as guests or accessing via mobile telephony via tablets or smartphones there may be more problems. In terms of weaning people off such social media addictions, I honestly think we'll see some Facebook Anonymous groups popping up in the not too distant future.

The world is changing fast thanks to the enhanced ways we have to communicate. That may not always be a good thing. There is such a thing as anti-social networking and there is such a thing as lack of productivity.

I think both of these things will become bigger issues in the next year or two.

What is the Social Media Agenda?

It isn't normally an acid test for a business to ask that if it failed to survive from tomorrow would we miss it. But you could easily ask that question when applied to say the Royal Mail whose collapse would have a very large effect if it shut down tomorrow as post and parcels may not get delivered before Christmas, as an example.

It's perhaps more applicable to ask the question when the company offers its service free of charge, like Twitter.

Yesterday I asked if social media and networking had actually down anything for us. I don't think anyone would disagree that the new medium has helped change the way many of us communicate and therefore it has done something for us. But if a substantial part of social media was to change, not exist or become chargeable as of tomorrow morning, would we actually miss it?

Let's ask that question of Twitter. Why Twitter? because it is the most ingeniously simple of all the social media ideas. In just 140 characters you have to say something that you hope many people will read as something of value. Well I follow some 180 people and I can honestly say that I would value around 1% of what they say. I set aside Cricket Commentator David Lloyd whose list of Christmas presents for his 'Nest of Vipers' was hilarious and Shane Warne's public and sugary growing love story with his fiancé Elizabeth Hurley - they have been intriguing in different ways. Why? Because they are stories 'at source'. They are not newspaper articles or people surmising, they are the individuals saying real things.

But if Twitter died tomorrow, I can honestly say nothing would change of any consequence in my life - my business would carry on, life would carry on. Like the loss of a favourite TV channel, that would be that.

I would say Twitter has that odd feel about it as a business. So much might possibly be done by it but its fragile mechanism and attraction depends almost solely on the users' love affair with chuntering out any old 140 characters regularly unimpeded, unregulated and free from bombardment by advertisers. Mess with any of that equation and you suddenly have the whole lot falling down.

Twitter had further inward investment of some $300m from a Saudi Prince recently. There is no shortage of cash for investment and clearly all the investors see the potential return. Or do they? Is this the rich people's equivalent of putting $300m on the nose of some nag in the 5.30 at Kempton Park? Or have they seen the way that a 100m users will suddenly realise $billions of revenue every year?

If that medium is missable from tomorrow, then you would have to question investors' sanity. Clearly, with that kind of inbound investment money, Twitter is sticking around for a while yet. But the clock is ticking and pay back will be required some day soon. 

I think there is a huge danger in believing that just by attracting a large following that you can suddenly monetize it. Business models are key here but the bit that really worries me is the honesty with the users. If Twitter never proposes to charge users any money then realistically all they are is a database company who will rent out the 'space' each user occupies to the highest bidders to attract those users to spend some money on products or services. Twitter and Facebook, in that sense are glorified TV channels with the IP addresses of all the users which is pretty good knowledge.

That makes them the ad man's dream. If that is the case, shouldn't the users know that some day they will get bombarded with adverts, time and again with ever more personalised content to stimulate us buying? 

The Real Future of Social Media

Some years ago, I went to a presentation on the future by an entrepreneur who had invested in several internet companies every one of which I can say have failed. However, he did foresee that there would come a time when every advertiser on the planet will no longer work on house addresses or hit and hope on TV adverts, they will send personalised adverts into your private space on the internet with full knowledge of your buying habits, the credit cards you use, how much credit you have, what sex, age and dimensions you were, where you shopped, what you did on holiday, where your holiday snaps are, what you do for a living, what private habits you have, who your family were and what you were doing at any exact time. The murmur at the interval was that man was talking rubbish.

If anyone wanted to know all about any one of us, all that information is largely available from many sources on the web. A great deal of it is now held on Facebook and other social media sites. We have surrendered potentially valuable personal details of all sorts onto the web and there is very little left for people to know. The race is on to consolidate that information and monetize it.

Make no bones about it, the business model of every social media company is to whore its user base as long as we don't pay. Advertising of the future will no longer be hit and hope, it will be highly personalised and very intrusive but there will be far more sinister uses for all that data. 

In that context, if Twitter died tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it. But it's records of what I have done and said are saleable to somebody so there is a lasting legacy.

In some unnerving way, the whole business model of social media is mass blackmailing. I don't necessarily mean blackmailing as we know it although there is a great deal of potential there, but I mean advertising of such a personal nature that it 'blackmails' our sensibilities into making us do things we wouldn't have done without the stimulation to do so. And the 'protection racket' will be for us to pay to stop receiving such offers all the time.

The internet will become a legalised, largely unregulated forum for a good old protection racket.

There's more. Just as financiers have turned to nuclear physicists to help them beat the markets, psychologists can be used to make us all part with cash we would never have parted with otherwise. Supermarkets use 'data warehousing' to look at our individual buying habits and give us 'suggested trolley loads' and then tailor offers to make us buy more - because they know we will. In fact, they will be able to predict the precise moment to know when we will be more prone to do so.

How? If we Tweet or add a Facebook message with specific data, don't be surprised to find something specifically tailored to the context of what you have just done using all your personal data to predict exactly what you will do next. To sell that exact moment to an advertiser could become the nirvana of every social media company.

So it isn't just your personal space that is for sale, it is every second of your existence based on the intimate knowledge of you as an individual and every personal and financial piece of data on you and your family, friends and business associates.

There is a way to go yet on this journey. But people don't invest this kind of money in such flimsy business ideas without the firm knowledge that there is a mega payback. The payback will be guaranteed by our ever increasing willingness to not just surrender more personal data onto the web but to be able to track exactly what we are doing and when.

You didn't think there was a reason for setting Facebook as your default internet page with automatic login? Didn't you, really? 

In the world of monetisation of social media, the real fun has yet to begin. I hear people bleat about data protection and privacy but I would challenge that not more than 1% of all the 800m Facebook users has ever read more than the first sentence of the company's Terms of Use.

You didn't really think all these benevolent platforms were for free, did you? Microsoft gave us all those lovely free products and yet made 40% net profit on sales. 

Nothing is ever really given for free.

Could Privacy Laws Kill the Social Media Boom?

Facebook, Google and others have been dogged by issues surrounding privacy and use of personal data. It is perhaps the biggest threat to Facebook's monetization opportunity.

The controversy in the US got bigger recently as Congress got involved over the case of the application Carrier IQ. Until as late as October Apple used the data gathering software in its iPhone and iPad products and still today remnants of the program exist in OSX 5 and will be swept clean in the next release although Apple have been swift to tell us that the program is switched off. Apple assured us that no keystroke, messages or personal data was ever recorded but only diagnostic information and it did not violate any privacy laws where each user has to agree to allow the information to be sent.

Facebook, obviously, records everything that we willingly put into it. The degree of personal information entered and shared with others could go a long way to understanding most of our most personal secrets let alone having nuggets of gold in pointing tailored adverts to us all.

Only this week, the Federal Trade Commission in the US had a suit settled by Facebook about its misleading its 800 million users about its use of their private data. It has now surrendered to be independently audited for the next 20 years. CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has admitted that Facebook has made a 'bunch of mistakes' in a recent blog but assures everyone that his social networking empire is now back on course.

Crucial to all this has been the notion of 'Opt in' which was the traditional way that users of any service or website could agree to not only receive regular emails but to have their data effectively passed on or sold to other parties for their own use. This created the first waves of 'legitimate' spam in a Big Bang of data that still echoes around the web. Often the email address from which you originally 'opted in' is still being bombarded by a ton of spammers who bought the data. And once opted in, it has proved to be impossible to get off the lists as once the data is sold on it, like some sort of debt swap, has a life of its own and it is the data originator's - your - responsibility to opt out of all the spam sent to you one by one.

It is worth remembering on your Facebook account. Sadly, 'fixing' the problem doesn't really exist as once you have 'opted in' your data can be used by that site until you 'opt out' by which time that data may have been traded or passed on several times.

There may be no evidence to show that Facebook has ever traded that data but there is no doubt that it has been used to allow advertisers to get better access to you. This whole area has a way to go yet as one of the most prized assets within the $100bn valuation that Facebook has is not just access to your most personal data but that many of you have 'opted in' to allow that data to be used by Facebook in whatever way it wishes.

It's as good as owning your private details to be used and traded in whatever way Facebook chooses. So the next time you post a picture of your child or send a message to a friend, think about who 'owns' that data.

I foresee that privacy and data ownership will be the biggest issue of the Social Media boom and could take the shine off the big money IPOs for the future. As, strip it all away, that's all that Facebook has is data. 

But, my goodness, it has tons of it, and really personal stuff, on each and every one of us.

Is Social Media Just Another Goldmine?

Amongst all the banal guff you get on Twitter, I decided to pose a philosophical question. Has Social Media done anything to better the world or is it just another goldmine?

To date, I haven't had a single reply. Perish the thought of a retweet. It isn't that surprising really as the lack of answers sort of answers the question.

The fact is that you could present arguments for and against. Only a few days ago I saw great sportsmen like Freddie Flintoff, Michael Vaughan, Graeme McDowell and many more create a trend on Twitter for a young girl with terminal cancer which was part of her 'bucket list'. I see Marieme Jamme developing a narrative for Africa through her activities in Social Media, today her questions were on vaccination programs. I dare say we have plenty of examples of this kind of 'force for good' that some use Social Media for.

Equally, I could just say that most tweets are from attention-seeking wannabes who just like the sound of their own tweets.

Despite the incredible growth in Social Media and the massive usage, we still fight wars, people still starve and there is still incredible social injustice everywhere we look. Although Twitter can claim some small victory in helping debunk the idiot law on Super Injunctions, it has done little else to further social causes beyond the promotion of individual plights, though often for very worthy motives.

In reality, the biggest buzz about the whole phenomenon is about the valuations of each platform. Vast, astronomical amounts of money are being talked of and paid in some instances. It seems the ultimate motives behind Social Media are ones of greed and vast personal wealth.
Perhaps I am being idealistic but when I saw such powerful tools for interaction and networking come into being I did believe that at least one side effect would be that more people could communicate for the good. Perhaps we could find out that we have more in common with Muslims than we don't. Perhaps the same could be said of the Chinese. But when money's at stake, the only reason that we gripe about China's crackdown on Google and Facebook is because we cannot exploit the vast population there for 'monetisation' not because we really care about freedom of thought or speech.

Will Social Media be the biggest opportunity ever missed? Will we only really care about our personal standings in Klout and PeerIndex or measure our personal worth on our numbers of followers? Or will we ever care about changing an unfair world?

In no small way, Simon Cowell was blocked from his tasteless commercial hijacking of Christmas when an Internet wave made 'Rage against the machine' the Christmas No. 1 instead of it being the automatic right of the X Factor winner. That tiny, trivial rebellion illustrated the power we have at our fingertips.

It's just a fact that Tim Berners-Lee and all the originators of the information world we now exploit never made a bean out of it. Their vision was for an opportunity for us all to communicate and share ideas. Somewhere along the way, a bunch of people hijacked the concept and made fortunes.

Don't get me wrong, we all need to earn a living but are we missing the point on Social Networking?

Social Networking Costs Business

Look out, the boss is coming. Make sure that Facebook page is hidden and make it look as though you are doing work.

We have been here before. I can remember when everyone told us that word processing was the biggest drain of office productivity as everyone started writing their own documents instead of handing them to typists. Then we had the lunacy of email when we would send a mail to someone seated next to us rather than talk to them, then chat facilities like MSN started to catch our attention. Well now it's Social Networking.

In a recent study, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are estimated to cost UK businesses around £1.3bn of lost productivity according to research done by Morse, a systems integrator.

There are now cases of companies banning such sites from use on company networks, while many others are changing their Employee Handbooks to include notices that stop workers from using such sites during working hours and only on breaks. I worked at one company where virtually the entire sales floor had Facebook as their homepage and throughout the day people would be sending messages to one another via their pages yet they sat not a few feet away from each other. I felt quite the old fart for not using it and sniggering along to rude pictures and jokes circulating around - most likely about me.

However, in the Morse survey, around 76% of the people surveyed responded by saying their employer had yet to issue guidelines on the use of social networking sites during working hours. But more worrying was that around a third of those surveyed said that they had seen sensitive information posted, but 81% reckoned that they should decide what they should be able to post. This a warning bell for any company.

This particular issue is of great importance to companies. A growing problem to companies and individuals is what is posted on social networking sites. It could be sensitive data, it may be compromising pictures or it could defamatory remarks. The potential for lawsuits is growing and many users of such sites often post material without regard to the potential issues they may cause or worry about who reads it.

There is a real urgency for company HR departments and management to get to grips with their policy documents and ensure that they protect themselves as an organisation from the potential outcomes of postings by their employees.

There is a whole legal debate yet to be had about whether the information posted on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube et al is construed to be the property or thoughts of a company rather than an individual. In the case of LinkedIn, there is already a case in UK Law which ruled that the entries were governed by employer confidentiality and property clauses in contracts. If that is the case, then postings made to social networking sites during work hours might possibly lead back to the companies the people work for. It's best to make sure you are properly 'disclaimered' for such circumstances.

A further concern is that many people follow links on social networking sites despite the fact that 81% of those asked thought there may be potential security risks in doing so. It seems people cannot resist a good potential link and that is hugely dangerous for a corporate network.

It all points towards companies taking a real interest in protecting themselves both legally and technically against the growing use of social networking. Quite apart from the loss in productivity which is bad enough, companies are exposing themselves to potential security and legal threats which could amount to a far greater cost to the business.

It can be no longer the case of 'What goes on on tour, goes on Facebook'. Companies need to be aware of the potential threats to their business from social networking.

Rules of Engagement

It may come as a surprise to us all, but HR people have friends. I can even confess that I have several friends who are openly 'HR' and I respect them for it.

We may titter a moment at the idea of friendless HR people but there is a serious point here. With the rise of Social Networking Media and all its wide choice of communication that it offers to us and our friends, there is also the aspect that it is public. Very public.

I remember a story of a person who attended the European Championships in Germany and waved excitedly at the camera when they realised they were on the big screen. They had forgotten that their boss also liked football and was watching back home and the person had not booked holiday but had done a bunk pretending to be sick. It resulted in instant dismissal.

There have been cases of individuals losing their jobs because of You Tube videos of them drunk while holiday or a tour. We may feel very strongly what we do in our spare time is own business but when we risk having such unsavoury antics posted publicly then we are exposing ourselves to the criticism and much more of others. It is very difficult to stop these days as often these clips can be posted without your permission. That may not help when your boss, tutor or best customer sees it.

The fact is that Facebook and all the multifarious derivatives are very open to public view. I even know of a case of where a young PA was so obsessed with using Facebook through the day, one of her bosses had even requested to be her friend, an invitation she accepted, and he promptly sent her a message to get him a cup of tea while sitting no more than two desks away. The point being that the boss felt it was becoming the only way to communicate with her while she was cheesed off she got found out that she was browsing Facebook all day in company time.

At one place I worked a few years ago, there was a high percentage of staff who were relatively young (can I say that anymore?) who were desk based in a large open office. Over 75% had Facebook as their home page and they communicated to each other all day via the messages when they actually sat at the furthest points no more than 20 metres apart. Facebook and the likes can be very counterproductive in the modern office and that's a real problem for employers.

For the employee, it also exposes what they are doing. Messages are timed and public as are the photos. It can be all too easy to be monitored and this can pose serious problems. The adage of 'What goes on on tour, goes on You Tube' is becoming a new mantra and it is getting a little more serious. As we relish the thought of knowing MP Expenses details, would it not be nice to know how much time our paid employees are spending on social network sites during the hours of work?

There are many instances of people who have posted disparaging remarks about their bosses or companies on the web and getting disciplined at minimum while others simply get fired. We all get frustrated and bored in our jobs, we may even dislike the company and individuals such as our boss or a colleague. We may even choose to tell our friends and family, but you wouldn't necessarily take out a TV advertisement with your name on it and let the world know, would you? That's what social networking can be. It's an uncontrolled medium that is public in many places and so it can be monitored far more easily than we like and our bosses and even HR people can have accounts too.

Imagine 'slagging off' a colleague on a social networking site and then that employee raises a grievance that they are being bullied at work - would your comments be evidence of such bullying? Indeed they would.

It is as well to have your own 'Rules of Engagement' on social networking - if you use it extensively, have your own guidelines for when you communicate, how you communicate, what you want others to say to you and what you don't want shown. It makes just a little sense to think this all through beforehand rather than discover a 'mate' has posted a picture of you drunk in gutter when you were meant to be at home ill.

It's as well to be very wary of this. There is a fine line for companies to pry too much into what employees are doing in or out of work hours than can be construed as breaching our privacy. But when we are silly enough to make it all very public, well that's just asking for trouble.

Are Your Social Network Contacts Owned By Your Employer?

I read recently on Peter Gold's Talent Technology Blog and in yesterday's Daily Telegraph that a former employee, Mark Ions, of recruitment firm Hays has been ordered to hand over business contacts built up on his personal page of the social networking site Linked In.

The Telegraph article says, "The decision is one of the first to highlight the tension between businesses encouraging employees to use social networking websites for work but then claiming that the contacts remain confidential information at the end of their employment".

The ramifications of this decision are quite scary. While it is implicitly obvious that if your firm has invested in CRM technology like Salesforce.com or ACT! as a business tool to manage your business contacts and interactions that you regard the contacts and information contained as the company's property and therefore are covered by confidential information clauses in your contract, it is almost certainly not the understanding of most employees that the business contacts they accrue on sites like Linked In are also bound by these contract clauses.

Now there may be special cases at work here. The recruitment industry has particularly taken to sites like Linked In which has revealing profiles of over 23 million people with current job titles, career information and sometimes contact information. It has been a particular gold mine for recruiters to not only find potential candidates for jobs but also to network as widely as possible to a) increase their chances of getting recruitment assignments and b) increase their working database of potential candidates. If you were to look at certain recruiter contacts on Linked In you would quickly realise that their 2500+ connections cannot possibly be anything than their office Rolodex of business contacts.

How will this affect Social Networking in Business?

This is perhaps the most important question. Linked In's official response to the decision was from 'a spokesman' who said that its members should not use the site to publish information that they have no right to disclose, such as insider, proprietary and confidential information. "It is important that customers abide by their current employment contract and ensure that they have the right to use the information provided."

This is a surprisingly uncontroversial statement from a company that thrives on business networking. This is a company that has built up its 'customer' list based on individuals signing up and freely entering their information on a publicly-viewed site knowing full well that their details can be viewed by other members of the site. Further many of the members have listed their interests as seeking new job opportunities. In other words, they could be construed to be 'fair game'. In most instances, sign up is for free. Similarly, the search facilities to find people by job function, keywords, locations, company names are quite sophisticated and lend themselves to recruiters or similar browsing to find juicy contacts for their next sale. Linked In has positioned itself well to cater for both needs, so why the non-committal response to this case that damages freedom of use by the individual?

Linked In has more recently started working with Corporations to look at providing some different services for companies. Advertising for jobs and services is one important area but there is no doubt that Linked In is slowly, having accumulated a vast list of business contacts from around the globe, repositioning itself as an online CRM system of sorts.

In Linked In's attempts to further 'monetise' its member base it is now marketing itself as a Corporate service having grown from a focus on the individual, not worrying who the person worked for. It is a subtle change in focus that justifies the spokesperson's statement perhaps. But perhaps gone are the days of Linked In being a Social Network, it is now very much a Business Network and is in the camp of the employer.

Ramifications

I should mention that I am not a lawyer and so consider this as my personal opinion only and should not be considered a legal opinion.

The clear ramifications are for those who do their prospecting via Linked In as part of their company's business. Recruiters fall slap bang into this category and Hays is the first to make a call on this and test it in law - with a successful outcome. But does this also affect everyone else who uses Linked In or similar networks at least in part for prospecting for business on behalf of their company or themselves in company time?

I think it does and certainly it calls for people to review their strategy in using Linked In at a personal level in order to increase their business network and win more business for their companies. Recruiters should certainly be concerned about this and seek clarification from their employers. I would suggest that employers should also be more clear on what constitutes confidential information as contract clauses are notoriously woolly and online social/business networking is a relatively new phenomenon which needs some special attention. Sharpen your pencils HR managers.

The interesting aside is how Mr. Ion's solicitors (Jonathan Stokes Solicitors) presented the case on his behalf. From my point of view, I would be concerned about data that is not within the Corporate firewall or VPN and freely available on the internet being considered company confidential, particularly if it has not been paid for.

Rivalry

Linked In has been slow to monetise its membership from a Business-To-Business stand point. There are firms such as Jigsaw who have made a business on exchanging 'business cards' between contacts to build up data lists which can be filtered and then rented for mailing use. There is already plenty of legal thought about this type of service as the act of giving someone your business card or details has an inherent confidentiality associated with it and it does imply that the data is not to be distributed without permission - yet Jigsaw relies on that free distribution.

Linked In seeks the best of both worlds. It wants the data to be freely available and has the consent of its members to make it so, but it also wants to side with employers who encourage its employees to use Linked In to further its business, ultimately because it wants those employers to spend money with Linked In and therefore give some comfort on use of data afterwards.

Should we be scared?

I think so. This precedent has wide ranging implications beyond Linked In, although it is the major business to business network at the moment, others like Plaxo, Xing, Konnects, Viadeo etc fall into similar categories. With the rise of instances of Corporations involving themselves in networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Bebo and the rise of the Corporate position of 'Chief Networking Officer' the emphasis on the 'Social' is moving toward the 'Business' in networking.

Then again, to monetise all those juicy names, we knew it always had to. The party may well have been spoilt.

Footnote

Yesterday Linked In by coincidence raised finance of $53m valuing the company at a tad over $1bn. In discussing the implications of the ruling in favour of Hays, a friend pointed out the possible implications for each of us who has a profile on Linked In. We postulated that if Hays claimed some kind of 'possessary' title over the data accrued by the employee, then we wondered if that was made aware to the people who had connected with the Hays employee? Or indeed were any of us by connecting to anybody who solicited a connection, implying that our contact information could be used by a third party (i.e. the person's company) to use the data in whatever way it wished - for instance to be added to the corporate mailing list? Or indeed are we always assuming that we are connecting with an individual who we are think will help us achieve some of our goals like get a new job?

I am not a legal person, but it certainly I have experienced daft emails from recruitment companies advertising inappropriate jobs because of their loose keyword selection. Am I now to assume that when I connect to anyone at Linked In I am implicitly handing over my personal data in Linked In and contact information for use by a third party to do whatever they wish with? Or is there a law that protects me here in the UK or abroad? I know some will leap up and shout 'Data Protection' but the question might arise, where is the data stored in the UK or USA and so where is the governing law? There may be perfectly good answers to these concerns but at a time when Linked In have raised $56m is there a potential that the sheen on the service has been tarnished?