Legal Policies and Ethics

I want to focus on lawsuits made against Facebook. Anyone who has seen “The Social Network” knows about the biggest lawsuit against the company. The Winklevoss twins sued Mark Zuckerburg for allegedly stealing their idea to create a cool social network while they were studying at Harvard together. Although that is the most publicized story, I wanted to explore what concerns or issues users have had with the site.

I found an interesting story about David Fagin. Fagin is a Facebook user and a musician. He uses Facebook as a networking tool to promote his music. As a result he added a lot of friends, mostly using the “suggested friends” tab. One day he added too many people and Facebook tagged him as a spammer and suspended him for 7 days from adding new people. They also threatened to delete his account. Fagin’s biggest issue was that there was no where he could go to explain his case and petition being removed from the spammer list. The only place he was referred was the standard FAQ page.

Fagin wrote a blog post that went mini viral, but enough to catch the attention of a lawyer. Together they decided to sue Facebook for $1.00. The lawsuit was more of a media campaign than anything else. Fagin wanted to know what public feedback would be on the issue of Facebook lacking a support department.

I honestly think that Fagin enjoyed being in the spotlight more than he actually cared about Facebook’s lack of support. The campaign was successful in getting his name out there.

http://socialtimes.com/user-files-1-00-lawsuit-against-facebook_b59511

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/16/opinion-thanks-to-facebook-i-m-now-a-spammer/

http://videos.webpronews.com/2011/04/facebook-calls-man-spammer-and-gets-sued/

Another case I found was about a group of Facebook users out of California that were suing Facebook for allegedly storing information that would infringe on people’s privacy. The group accused Facebook of storing information about people based on the things that they “like” on their profiles and selling that information for marketing purposes. There is little evidence to support their claim but Facebook is being investigated. The group made their claim after finding that their computers web history had a unique way to cache information when they hit the “like” button.

The question is; is it a problem if Facebook is sending marketing people information about the things we “like” to produce more relevant advertisements? I don’t think it matters that much. If you think about it, whenever we “like” a business or whatever it may be, we are basically requesting information about it. Why not receive other relevant information. Facebook has never been overbearing with advertisements, so I don’t mind. The hard truth is that there are 2.5 million businesses that have the “like” button incorporated into their websites with 10,000 more adding it every day. Maybe there is something out there you may be interested in, but without some kind of interest tracking it will never be visible to you.

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/California/News/2011/05_-_May/Facebook_sued_for_using__Like__button_to_track_online_activity/

Here are some other articles about cases that I don’t really want to write about.

http://www.neowin.net/news/lawsuits-filed-against-facebook-for-violating-federal-law

https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs9-wrtp.htm

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20113958-93/chicago-company-sues-facebook-over-timeline-feature/

http://jonathanturley.org/2011/10/12/georgia-court-rules-against-teacher-who-lost-job-after-posting-facebook-pictures-drinking-in-europe/

Organizational Uses

I have always thought that Facebook could be a useful way to communicate between an organizations hierarchy and its lower level employees. The problem arises with concerns about privacy. Your Facebook profile is out there for the world to see, but of course there are people that you don’t want to allow access to that window into your life. The idea of using Facebook as a communication tool is valid. However, I would never want to be friends with my current boss. Luckily there are other avenues that are more for a professional setting.

One of my favorite and most useful sites that I have found is Dropbox.com. “Dropbox, a free service that lets people bring their documents, photos and videos everywhere and share them easily. More than 45 million people already depend on Dropbox” (http://www.dropbox.com/press/20111027). One of the companies I work for uses drop box to share every document needed to run and organize a branch of the business from anywhere. Our Dropbox contains documents, contracts, tutorials, pictures and training materials. I have found it incredibly useful to have all of that information at my fingertips. Dropbox saves a lot of the hassle of forwarding and sharing documents and provides more privacy than using Gmail. Dropbox is easy to use and if you have an iPad, you can carry your whole document library wherever you go.

Dropbox was created by Drew Houston. He has an interesting story. Houston created one of the fastest growing websites out there. When the website first started gaining popularity, it caught the attention of Steve Jobs who offered to buy the website for an obscene amount of money. I admire Houston for not selling out. He was determined to create a large business out of Dropbox. Dropbox has around 50 million users and another joins every second. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/)

Social Media: Apps, QR Codes.

Mobile devices are quickly becoming an intricate part of the way we live our lives. Smart phone users have any basic information that they might require at their fingertips. These phones provide news, weather updates, social media connection, navigation system and the possibilities are endless. The new Siri program for the iPhone 4S is the coolest thing I have ever seen. I remember when I left the country for two years thinking that my flip camera phone was as good as it gets. Upon return I held my first iPhone and it gave me a headache.

Quick Response Codes have always been something that interest me. I have never personally taken the time to download a QR reader for my phone or used my camera to scan one. But I can see the benefit they could have and I have seen a lot of businesses jump on the band wagon. I have seen QR codes on billboards, in restaurants, on flyers. They are everywhere. However, most people I have talked to are in my same boat. Not often do we take the time to scan them. I did a little research and found this article that gave me a little more faith in QR codes. http://beqrious.com/show/the-power-to-mobilize-your-life-qr-codes
QR codes have been used in Japan for over a decade now and the rest of the world is just catching on. QR codes do not only embed URLs, which I originally thought. "It can encode telephone numbers, text messages, commands and contact information." Knowing they can do that, I think that QR codes will only get more popular.

I am probably less informed than a lot of people my age when it comes to new apps and smart phone functions. I promised myself that I wouldn't become a slave to technology, but it's just so damn convenient. People in high level math classes would usually need to spend a few hundred dollars to get a nice calculator, now you can get an app for $50 that performs the exact same functions. I love that apps make it so you can personalize your phone. If there is something irrelevant to you on there, it is easy to delete and replace it. I've seen apps that can do amazing things to keep me informed or entertained, but nothing had made my jaw drop in a while, until Siri came out.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/iphone-4s-getting-along-well-with-siri/5338

This article was pretty cool. It talks about the main uses for Siri that the writer uses on a daily basis. He uses the reminders app constantly to remind him to change the laundry or turn down the temperature on the oven. Siri helps to remind us of the simple things we tend to forget. Siri makes it easy to set alarms as well. I feel like the road is a safer place with Siri as well. No longer will people have to uses their hands or take their eyes away from the road to text or make a call, it is simply a command away.

I can't wait to see what the future has in store. Things are changing so fast, it will be hard to keep up. But for all of us in the Public Relations profession, we have to stay up to date on all of this stuff. The more informed we are on the uses of technology, the more useful we will be to a company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNsrl86inpo