Analysis of Firms Social Media Usage - Essay Example

From copyright to intellectual properties and from confidentiality to contractual agreements, social media has raised the brows of ethical and legal torchbearers in this regard.

How it relates to business law:

Social media is impacting the business world and dynamics in all possible ways. From stakeholder to competitive communication, use of surrogate business practices, issues of privacy, confidentiality, and breach of contracts and agreements stem directly from incessant use of social media.

Especially from the point of view of securing intellectual property rights, social media mocks at those thinking of this. The speed of information dissemination and exchange is so fast on the internet that by the time one finalizes a website or trademark of the web address, another person wins in getting similar or exact copyright.

Also, contractual agreements with employees on the issue of the reasonable use of company resources and abiding by the privacy and security rules of the company’s information are also at stake.  Employees today generally ‘friend’ their competitors on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter and reveal many of the important and sensitive company information to others through posts and tweets which is available for others to look at and comment upon. This gives rise to unethical marketing practices and organizational gimmicks which ultimately lead to more litigations and breaches of contracts.

Personal comments:

From the widespread use of social media, it seems as if people are managing what they actually do not understand properly. In order to expand the friend list at social networking sites, employees and even bosses ‘friend’ their competitors also can damage the reputation of the company and place potential legal issues on posting and sharing confidential and damaging information over the internet.

From both legal and ethical standpoints, this seems to be a grave situation as the boundary line between communication channels and privacy barriers is getting blurred due to the usage of social media. Businesses need to have more control, monitoring, and action steps programs in place because social media can become a fierce tool in the hands of ‘disgruntled’ employees to embarrass the company.

Similarly, contracts with employees also need to be watched carefully as no one knows which employee is actually working for the benefit of the company and exchanging company information with the rivals. Social media is like an unwritten custom gaining widespread popularity and no written law to guide the actions or trends of posting and communicating with each other. This has made information management all the more complex, furious, and vulnerable.

In the end, it is clear that now businesses have to become more responsive and cautious of the activities and tasks are undertaken by their employees and the use of resources at work.