Newest Changes to Twitter and Facebook

Twitter recently announced that they were going to start allowing people who follow your account on Twitter, regardless if you follow them back, to send you direct messages on Twitter. It’s also been reported that you cannot have and weblinks in your Twitter direct messages. Other than spam from companies trying to sell you goods, how do you think this will impact you and your organization?

Facebook also made news by announcing that it has changed its privacy policy…again… that will allow all users to be discovered using Facebook Graph (it’s search tool). It doesn’t matter if you’ve protected and locked down your account. Fortunately there are a couple of tips to protect your information on Facebook as best possible without taking the step of completely deleting your account.

Will you follow people on Twitter just to send them direct messages? Is that spamming people you otherwise can’t contact?

What about Facebook? Will you make the necessary edits to your account to keep it as private as possible?

Let us know in the comments section.

As 2012 Winds Down

As 2012 winds down there were several major stories that I came across that are worth sharing.

First, not even the former marketing director of Facebook knows how the privacy policies at Facebook work. Randi Zuckerberg is the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg found out the hard way. On Christmas Day Randi posted a family photo on Facebook. She thought only her friends could see it. Boy was she wrong. Shortly after posting someone posted the photo to Twitter. She asked the person to remove the photo from Twitter. When you set photos to only be available to friends, you’re not really setting them to be viewed only by friends. I expect a revised version of how to make photos on Facebook private any day now. Here’s the photo that caused the ruckus…

from Mashable

Second, a local nonprofit executive is suing LinkedIn, because someone put up a LinkedIn profile with his personal information without his permission. I’m not sure why someone would post his private information on LinkedIn in this manner. It leads me to point out that even if you don’t post information to social media – others will on your behalf. If they post with nefarious reasons it can damage your personal or your organization’s reputation online. It can take weeks if not months to clean this up online. Pay attention!

Third, Last week I attended a great seminar at Jones Day that featured attorneys and representatives from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who discussed social media policies. The NLRB has a sample social media policy that you can use that the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel deems lawful. It is found in NLRB Operations Memorandum 12-59. At the seminar they also noted that privacy rules like HIPAA may need to be followed and thus would need to be included in the social media policy.

image from Business2community.com

Finally, as social media continues to change how we do work, how we communicate and how we live, 2013 should be an interesting year. What do you expect from social media in 2013? Let us know in the comments.

Social Media Privacy Again

A few months ago I wrote about a presentation I gave on social media and privacy. I now have a link to the recorded presentation. You’ll want make sure to click on the little video box (on the toolbar click view and then video) to see me as I present the materials.

The WebEx recording of the presentation will ask you to first register to hear the presentation. This recording lasts about an 42 minutes. Click on the icon to view and hear the presentation’s WebEx recording file.

Feel free to share the link with others.

Social Media and Privacy v.8/2010

Recently I gave a presentation on privacy and social media for ACHIEVA’s free webinar series. Privacy is a major issue for families and individuals we serve. Posting private information on social media sites takes that to a whole new level.

A copy of the recording should be up shortly but in the mean time here are the slides from my presentation.

Privacy, Social Media, and You

Facebook has been taking some heat about their privacy policies again. Users are concerned about Facebook’s new open grid and how it links and shares your information with others. Facebook just wants to make the web a more open and social place. However the user’s concerns have concerned Facebook enough to have a special meeting with all of their senior staff.

These privacy concerns have led to people removing all of their information from Facebook. If you read the fine print you need to make sure you have completely deleted the information. Otherwise Facebook thinks you have just deactivated it and will keep the information there because they believe you will come to your senses and reactivate the account. One new startup has promised that they are able to keep private the information you post on their social media platform and is getting quite a bit of press for it.

What kinds of privacy issues have you encountered with your social media efforts? Are you getting photo releases from the photos of people you are posting? Are you making sure you aren’t violating any HIPAA regulations in the things you tweet? Please feel free to share in the comments section.

Privacy Settings on Facebook source: New York Times - Click for larger version

Update 5/27/10 – Facebook has rolled back their changes to privacy settings. They took time to listen to their constituents. As Facebook continues to mature and grow it will undoubtedly continue to change policies and procedures (much like us).

Video Fridays #26 – Facebook Privacy

Did you know that Facebook changed their privacy policies in the past week? This could be important to you and your agency because if you don’t visit your privacy settings, you may be sharing information with third-party applications that you don’t want to. Also, Google and other search engines are starting to index Facebook posts and information.

If you don’t know your Facebook privacy settings, I recommend you login to Facebook and check.

Facebook Follies

Yesterday I stumbled across a group page on Facebook for my agency’s camping and recreation program. Our agency didn’t set up this group and we don’t administer it. A former camp counselor set it up as a way to reconnect with other former and current camp counselors from our camping program. They have our current camping program schedule posted to the site.

I want to reach out to the person who set up this group. I don’t want to take over the reins of this group but I want to make sure they continue to stay connected to our agency. By creating a group on a social media platform like Facebook, they have demonstrated that they have a strong link to our agency that continues even after they are no longer a summer counselor. This is someone who can be a donor, a volunteer. Whether or not they know it, they are acting as an evangelist for our programs.

Allowing someone else to write about you is something we will have to face now thanks to social media. This is a difficult situation for most, ie realizing that we can’t control what is written about us. And…we don’t have much of a choice in it. Unless they are violating a law or terms of their current/former contract this isn’t much we can do.

What are your agencies’ experiences with allowing others on social media platforms to create pages, blog posts, etc. that describe relate to your work?