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Twitter policies come to workplace [The San Diego Union-Tribune](San Diego Union-Tribune (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sep. 8--Twitter revolutionized small talk. Now it's rankling bigwigs. Although the popular social networking site limits each post to 140 characters, there appears to be no limit to the anxiety it's causing major players in sports, media, business, the courts, the military and other fields. Attempts to regulate Twitter's use at work, at school and on government time are soaring, and examples of Twitter jitters abound. Posts, called tweets, are resulting in fines, lawsuits, scolding and shame. For reasons of message control, security concerns and competitive advantage, some employers are restricting Twitter use by training their employees or banning what they can say on such sites and when they can say it. Reaction to this spans from reluctant acceptance to open revolt; a tennis star called new tweeting regulations "lame" last month, and a Cincinnati Bengals football player closed his Twitter account Friday with a tweet saying the NFL's rules had taken the fun out of it. Social media experts said outright restrictions are rife with risk for most groups -- not the least of which is being seen as a fuddy-duddy or a Luddite. These experts said a policy is essential, especially in a large organization, because any tweet is only a cell phone and a few seconds away. Yet large local companies aren't all rushing to develop social media policies for their employees. Defense contractor Cubic Corp. doesn't have one. Sempra Energy has been working on one for six months and might finish it in another six. Petco, the San Diego-based pet supply chain, adopted a three-page policy in November modeled after IBM's widely praised social computing protocol. Petco intranet manager Daniel Sundin said the policy bars blogging and using social media at the office unless required as part of an employee's job. The policy says employees are personally liable for what they write and are precluded, in part, from sharing sales numbers and proprietary information or using the company logo without permission. Although restrictions are needed, Sundin said, companies ignoring social media's power miss the big picture. "That's just a head-in-the-sand thing, and you're a dying company if you're doing that." Ultimately, businesses and institutions have a simple choice, said Howard Rheingold, a self-described online instigator who teaches social media courses at Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley: Go with the flow or try to control it. "Is there an advantage to having people see that we enable open communication, including criticism?" he asked. "Or do we think that there are some things that we ought to keep in the family?" While that answer may depend on one's point of view, or job title, technology gurus agree that any hazards -- from unveiling state secrets to mere embarrassment -- decrease if the people using the technology understand how it works. "If you don't know what you're doing, you could do all types of danger to your organization," Rheingold said. The types of Twitter trouble vary greatly. Jurors' tweets triggered calls for mistrials in Arkansas and Pennsylvania in March. A renter was sued in July for $50,000 for mentioning her Chicago landlord's name in a tweet about a moldy apartment. And media outlets from ESPN to The Roanoke Times have adopted social networking policies after staffers' tweets about news and company meetings made management wary. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps banned the use of social media sites on government computers last month, and the military is considering wider restrictions even as recruiters acknowledge the tool's usefulness. In sports, NBA player Charlie Villanueva was shamed into abandoning halftime tweets in March after his coach found fault with one that said he would step up in the second half. The Chargers fined cornerback Antonio Cromartie $2,500 last month for a tongue-in-cheek post about what he called the team's "nasty" food at training camp. Twitter's strength is its immediacy. Tweets are posted and read instantly by anyone with a computer or a cell phone, creating a collective consciousness and an organic, constantly evolving stream of information. Posts can be made private, but hardly anyone does it. The popularity of Twitter has been explosive. It started in San Francisco in early 2006, intended as a way for people to stay in touch with small groups of friends. Twitter's Web site eclipsed 1 million users in 2008. In June, it had 44.5 million visitors, according to Internet research firm ComScore Inc. Companies from electronics retailer Best Buy to shoe seller Zappos have embraced Twitter as a way to communicate with consumers. News outlets, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, are increasingly doing the same; the CNN breaking news feed is among the most popular Twitter accounts. Others with massive followings include actor Ashton Kutcher, who challenged and beat CNN to 1 million followers; Oprah Winfrey; President Barack Obama; and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal. Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia University digital journalism professor, cited O'Neal in making the point that any policies promoting "smarter, better, more thought-through uses of social media" need to be developed before people's tweeting habits take root. "I think it'd be very hard for the NBA to say to Shaq, 'You can't tweet anymore,'?" Sreenivasan said. Twitter enthusiast Becky Carroll, who teaches a new-media marketing class at the University of California San Diego, said many people might regard a Twitter ban as good for the military and bad for sports stars -- which puts businesses like Petco in between, with a need for some restrictions in an area rich with marketing potential. But she called a total shutdown "pretty un-American." The very idea of information control is becoming an oxymoron, said Heather Honea, associate professor of marketing at San Diego State University. Still, she said, organizations are better off "helping develop the narrative" themselves. "They're not going to manage the information entirely," Honea said. "I just think they're going to manage who starts it." Social media experts said to remember one thing above all else when typing: Even short sentences can have long-lasting effects. CNET executive editor Molly Wood joked online last month that Twitter lowers inhibitions and has an immediate effect, like alcohol. She called Twitter "the Long Island iced tea of the Internet." "Just don't tweet and drive," she said. "That's not safe." Union-Tribune Matthew T. Hall: (619) 542-4599; To see more of the San Diego Union-Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.signonsandiego.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The San Diego Union-Tribune Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |