Information Gathering and Social Networks: Minimizing Exposure in the Digital Age

By Mkessa Patricia

Social networking websites can serve as first
impressions for employers, investors, friends, and
potential romantic partners. From Twitter to
Facebook to YouTube, use of social networking sites
has become ubiquitous. Yet, for all the talk of social
networking and social media, many users lack a
clear understanding of the ramifications of using
such websites. So, what is online social networking
and how does it work? As use of social networking
sites grows, what kind of legal exposure could sites
face for programs and policies that disclose user
information? Will online social networking change
how courts, lawyers and juries conduct discovery,
prepare for trial, and deliberate?

Online social networking sites allow users – through
personal computers or mobile phones – to share
ideas, activities, events, and interests within their
individual social networks – and all typically for free.
Social networking sites run the gamut: there are
sites devoted to dating and meeting new people
(e.g., Nerve, Match, eHarmony), sites that offer
users the opportunity to connect with friends and
family members (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, Ping),
sites for professional networking (e.g., LinkedIn,
Sermo, INmobile), and sites devoted to information
sharing (e.g., Twitter, Redditt, Digg). Online social
media usage has risen dramatically over the last
three years – 230 percent since 2007, according to a
recent Simmons New Media Study.1 Nearly 66
percent of Americans online report using a social
networking site, with nearly half of that group
accessing sites multiple times a day.
2 Use of social
networks is not just for the young. Forty-one
percent of online adults over the age of 50 report
making monthly visits to social networking sites.3 As
of April 26, 2010, 46 percent of online adults in the
U.S. reported visiting Facebook within the last 30
days, according to the Simmons Study.4
Facebook is by far the most popular social
networking site worldwide, with over 500 million
users spending an estimated 700 billion minutes a
month sharing personal updates and photos at the
site.5 But online social networking is exploding in
other areas as well. Twitter, a popular instant
messaging website that allows users to send short
messages to online "followers," reported in
February 2010 that its users were sending over 50
million "tweets" a day.6 YouTube users upload 24
hours of video footage each minute and watch over
two billion videos a day on the video-sharing site.7
Social networks gather a range of information from
users – from information users provide directly to
the site, to information revealed when users
interact with the site, to information gleaned from
users' interaction with third parties.