In the October 2010 issue of Corporate Counsel, we provided five tips that corporations should follow to avoid “E Trouble,” a term we coined to refer to the devastating impact emails and electronically stored information (ESI) can have in litigation. With social media use exploding nationwide, the E-Trouble threat has expanded to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, and Foursquare, which all allow users to create profiles and “connect” with others to meet new people; share ideas, news, entertainment, personal information, photographs, and videos; and engage in networking.
An August 2011 Nielsen Company study found that Americans spend nearly a quarter of their online time on social networking sites and blogs, a 43 percent increase from the previous year. Since social media sites have become increasingly popular for marketing and business purposes, the risk of E-Trouble has increased, and managing that risk is mission-critical for corporations operating in today’s online world.
