Upcoming Event!

Are you going to BlogHer Business ’10 this August?

If you are a company that markets to women, you should be! The BlogHer Business Conference is described as “an annual “crash course” on best practices for reaching the most influential and powerful consumers — women online — in the quickly evolving social media world.”

Last year, the roughly 200 attendees learned from awesome social media success stories like Coach and Fiskars. This year is shaping up to be even more exciting — and not just because I’ll be speaking on a panel with 3  fantastic social media leaders (BlogHer’s co-founder and COO, Elisa Camahort Page, Stacey Ferguson from the FTC, and WOMMA’s Executive Director, Kristen Smith).

Here’s the description of our panel:

The FTC Guidelines have been a hot topic for the majority of the year – but have they had any significant impact on how marketers and bloggers do business? What changes have we seen in social media marketing as a result? What kinds of enforcement actions have been taken? Are you and the brands or bloggers you work with in compliance with the new rules?

Hope to see you in New York! (The regular BlogHer conference is sold out, but you can still get tickets for BlogHer Business ’10.)

Announcements: Wired Wisconsin & Digital Due Process

First, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining Wired Wisconsin for a talk on Government 2.0, Utilizing Social Media.

Our last program like this was a lot of fun, and attendees, like Wendy Soucie, indicated that our presentation was unique and valuable. So if you are in Madison, or can get there on April 14, please join us!

Also, I’ve just joined the Digital Due Process Coalition, which is a group of non-profit, corporate, academic, and legal privacy advocates, who are working together to advocate for modernization of our federal government surveillance laws. The group’s guiding principal is:

To simplify, clarify, and unify the ECPA standards, providing stronger privacy protections for communications and associated data in response to changes in technology and new services and usage patterns, while preserving the legal tools necessary for government agencies to enforce the laws, respond to emergency circumstances and protect the public.

Presently, the only way to describe the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and other associated laws concerning how the federal government can legally obtain access to information about US citizens’ and residents’ communication activities is that they are a hot mess.

There are differences in what standards the government must meet depending on whether a person has opened an email message or not, whether the interception is while the message is in transit or has been delivered to their email provider’s email server, and there are special protections for your movie rental records. And those are just a few examples. (CDT used to have a great traffic-light-style color-coded chart showing what data receives what level of protection, but I cannot find it anywhere. Except in black & white as an appendix in my book, which is not as beautifully clear as the original.)

(Leave aside the question of whether or not the government is actually following the rules. We should have good rules, AND we should hold law enforcement agencies accountable for following the rules, whatever they are. NSA, I’m looking at you.)

It would be great for everyone — law enforcement, citizens, and companies/organizations who have to provide information — if federal law w asclearer, more consistent, and easier for everyone to understand. It should also do a better job of protecting the individual privacy, particularly for  those of us who are not the targets of current criminal (or terrorism) investigations.

Blissdom Conference with FTC Update

I was on a great panel yesterday with Susan Getgood from Blog With Integrity and Kristen Berman from Intuit, here at the Blissdom 2010 Conference.

One of the difficult questions that came up is around the FTC Advertising Guides. As many of you know, Blog With Integrity did a Webinar in November with Mary Engle of the FTC.

In that session, Ms. Engle indicated that bloggers need to put disclosures of any material relationships in the top of a blog post, NOT at the bottom.

Confusingly, one of her colleagues, Richard Cleland, did a different webinar in which he said that that it was fine to put disclosures at the bottom of a post.

Happily, here in the Blissdom Conference audience, we had a 3rd member of the FTC Advertising Practices team, Stacey Ferguson. Stacey helpfully clarified — and promised she’d try to make sure that everyone on the team communicates the same message — the following:

The FTC prefers disclosures to be at the top of the post, but that is NOT a requirement of the Guides.

Let me say that again:

You do not HAVE to put disclosures at the top of the post.

Disclosures still need to be within each applicable post. Blanket disclosures are not good enough. BUT. There is more flexibility in where and how that looks than had been previously communicated.

Remember, the standard is that the disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous.” If you’ve been paid or received goods or services for free, you need to disclose that in a clear and conspicuous way. Forunately, exactly what that looks like has some room for interpretation within your post.

Register Now – CLE Webinar on Social Media Challenges for Lawyers and Clients

On January 27, 2010, I’ll be conducting a webinar called Social Media Challenges for Lawyers and Clients. The webinar is through the State Bar of Wisconsin, and will also include Tim Pierce, Ethics Counsel, State Bar of Wisconsin.

Important details: 2 CLE credits, from 11:30 am-1:30 pm, Central time, register through the State Bar. The cost is $125 for members, $145 for non-members, and is free for Ultimate Passholders.

Here’s the agenda:

Can you Twitter your way to a lawsuit?

Are there downsides to using social media? Whether or not your clients have made a strategic choice to create a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or through corporate blogs, they have a social media presence. Their employees are using these tools, at home if not at work. (Your employees are, too!) The question is what are they saying about their work, and how are your clients and their customers responding?

Find out about potential pitfalls in using various forms of social media to communicate with your clients or discuss client-related issues.

You’ll also learn:

• Potential dangers that may lurk in a law firm’s Web site
• What to watch out for to avoid creating problems for yourself and your firm

Companies and organizations need to set policies around how their employees (and volunteers) communicate about work and the workplace via social media venues, and they need to make sure that their employees understand the rules.

Who should attend:

• Any lawyer considering social networking
• Any lawyer representing clients involved in social networking

What you’ll learn:

• Key elements of a good policy and risks associated with bad policies
• Special issues for certain populations: Financial Services, Health Care, Education, Law Practice
• Importance of employee education/training