Comfort for corporate networkers
Jinfo Blog

19th August 2008

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Companies struggling with how to reap the benefits of social networking while limiting its collateral damage may take comfort from two recent developments. A new report from Gartner sets out sensible policies for governing corporate social networking, and a recent UK legal ruling has established that defamation on bulletin boards may have less serious consequences than might previously have been thought. Rather than shunning web participation for fear of bad behaviour, organizations should anticipate it and create policies for its effective governance, says Gartner’s $495 report Establishing Policies for Social Application Participation – outline at http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=737512. Too tight a focus on controls and restrictions can mean losing sight of the fundamental goals of building a thriving, self-sustaining community, the report continues. ‘Managing an appropriate balance between freedom and control is crucial to community growth and maintenance, and must be tuned continuously,’ adds Gartner’s research director Nikos Drakos. Governance strategies won’t necessarily stop damaging things being said. But in his recent High Court ruling on bulletin boards – reported in the Out-Law online legal newsletter http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=9330 – Mr Justice Eady stated that they were rather like people chatting in a bar, where the conversation was often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out. ‘Those who participate know this and expect a certain amount of repartee or “give and take”,’ his ruling said. ‘When considered in the context of defamation law, therefore, communications of this kind are much more akin to slanders (this cause of action being nowadays relatively rare) than to the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions.’ People don’t often take a thread and go through it as a whole like a newspaper article, he added. They read, contribute if they feel inclined, and think no more about it. You can also argue that if it’s all in the family – as one would expect it to be in many corporate situations – then the damage will be limited anyway. Dirty linen washed behind a firewall is going to escape the public gaze. If it stays behind the firewall, that is. As long ago as May of last year, LiveWire reported research findings http://www.vivavip.com/go/e8 showing that people could be persuaded to part with their precious passwords in return for an inducement as simple as a bar of chocolate. Now another Out-Law report http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=9345 has findings from a survey conducted for the online content provider AOL by the consultancy Promise, and reported to a UK House of Commons seminar last month. According to AOL, 84% of the 1,000 online consumers it surveyed in connection with targeted behavioural advertising research said they would not give away their income details online – but then in answer to a further question, 87% of respondents did exactly that.

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