The response to the policytool that rTraction and I collaborated on has been overwhelming.  In its first week,  over 10,000 people have visited the sites and 1500 different companies have taken the first steps in creating a social media policy.  See rTraction’s post for more details of the response.

And the only thing we did to publicize it was a couple of blog posts and tweets, and a few emails to individuals we thought might be interested.

For the London Free Press – October 26, 2009

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CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: It’s a lot harder to manage online when reputations can be made or smeared by campaigns that may or may not be fair

An old customer service axiom says a dissatisfied consumer will tell eight other people about their experience.

Perhaps that axiom should now say 800, 8,000 or more, given that the Internet has made sharing dissatisfaction easier than ever.

The axiom emphasizes the importance of good customer service for business owners and the danger of even a few irritated customers.

The Internet and all its tools, such as websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is a double-edged sword for any entity promoting its brand.

It provides many tools to raise brand awareness and promote goods and services — but it also allows anyone to comment on a brand for all to see. Even brands selling quality goods and services will draw negative comments from someone, somewhere, even if undeserved.

Maytag learned this lesson first hand when a customer who was displeased with attempts to fix her washing machine voiced her displeasure on Twitter. She explained her complaints and asked her 1.3 million Twitter followers to join her in boycotting Maytag.

Though the company was aware of the posting and rectified the situation the next day, the damage was done — the dissatisfied customer had shared her aggravation with a very large audience.

Brands are becoming more about what people think of them, rather than what the brand owner tells people to think about them.

Where brands once could portray the image and message they wanted to represent, they now find themselves reacting to postings from bloggers and tweeters.

Recognizing this trend, tools are being introduced to let individuals comment on products more easily. Google, for instance, has introduced Sidewiki, which allows anyone to comment on anything on the Internet, whether the website owner condones their comments or not.

Sidewiki appears as an overlay on the side of the page that the Internet user is viewing. Users can make comments regarding the webpage they are viewing within the Sidewiki. For example, if the user is viewing the webpage of a restaurant they have eaten at recently, they could post a comment on their dining experience.

Such tools and the ability for anyone to comment strike fear into even the most reputable business.

Businesses are understandably concerned about a situation where even undeserved negative comments garner attention.

Reputation tools are, however, available to monitor comments posted on theInternet.

For example, Seth Godin has developed the Brands in Public website, which collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. With all the information in one place, companies can easily track what’s said about them.

Business owners should be aware of what people are saying about their products so they can respond accordingly.

Businesses generally can’t suppress negative comments — except to the extent they cross legal boundaries, such as defamation or intellectual property infringement — but they also can’t manage what they don’t know about.

For the London Free Press – June 29, 2009

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We are seeing rapid developments in use of technology in court, including twittering, texting, “Googling,” and using Facebook during trial. These tools can be helpful, but can also lead to abuse of the process.

Last month in Ottawa, Chief Justice Douglas Cunningham ruled reporters couldn’t use video cameras during the trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien, but could report live from court via electronic devices, “so long as any texting is done in an unobtrusive way and does not affect the running of the trial.”

“What we are talking about here is instant-text transmission to the blogosphere, but that is the world in which we live,” the judge said.

At the Bandidos trial in London, Justice Marc David also allowed use of electronic devices to provide live trial reports. And a U.S. District Court judge recently let a reporter send tweets from court.

Though there have been progressive uses, there have also been questionable uses.

In May, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Scott Silverman declared a mistrial after discovering a witness was texting on the stand. A basic rule forbids witnesses on the stand from communicating with anyone during breaks or recesses, from communicating with anyone. “I never had this happen before,” the judge said. “This is completely outrageous.”

In Arkansas, a lawyer for a convicted company argued for an appeal on the basis that a juror sent slanderous statements via Twitter during the $12.6-million lawsuit. He argued the Twitter messages showed the juror was biased toward the defendant, causing an unfair trial. The appeal judge disagreed, however, saying while the tweets were in bad taste, they were not considered improper conduct.

In another instance, a judge overturned a conviction and ordered a retrial after a juror used Google to research the crime. The juror also printed out documents found in the search and brought them to the trial.

A British juror used “crowdsourcing” to ask her Facebook friends how she should decide a criminal case. She was taken off the jury.

In North Carolina last September, Judge B. Carlton was reprimanded for “friending” a lawyer in an ongoing child-custody case, reading messages about the litigation, “Googling” the defendant and visiting the defendant’s website. The judge later disqualified himself from the case and was publically reprimanded by North Carolina’s Judicial Standards Commission.

Trying new technologies in the judicial process, questioning how things are done, and taking innovative approaches are all good things. But we must balance them with some thought about whether it’s the right thing to do in the circumstances.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to an article in the National Law Journal published on July 1 on the same topic.

That’s the title of my Slaw post from today, and the title of an article from socialcomputingmagazine.com.

My post reads:

That’s the title of an article worth reading at social computing magazine.com. (And speaking of social media, this article came to my attention via a Twitter post by Mathew Ingram.)

The article says:

KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and technical, and are locked in an undeclared cultural war for the soul of Enterprise 2.0.

And the most hilarious part is that most of the combatants don’t even realize they are in a war. They think they are loosely-aligned and working towards the same ends, with some minor differences of emphasis. So let me tell you about this war and how it is shaping up.

The article goes on to explain how boomers, gen-Xr’s and millenials approach this subject from different viewpoints. Its partly based on a top down control perspective vs a lets just create it perspective.

Another quote:

If you are wondering how a significant corporate cultural war can be in progress without making headlines, it is because the three generations involved process the world with different primary cognitive stances. The Boomers attempt to understand the world with words, and the best they can do is talk to themselves. The Gen X’ers try to avoid conflict by seeking solace in data and a relentless focus on reality. The Millenials are blissfully unaware of larger dynamics and just go ahead and create.

The article is interesting from the perspective of generational differences, and of KM vs SM.

So what does this have to do with the practice of law?

We all know that lawyers are hard to govern. We don’t like to do what we are told by the firm. Many lawyers are also traditionalists and are not keen to change. (Perhaps we are too rooted in precedent as an operating manual rather than as context – but that may be the subject of another post.) The top down approach usually doesn’t work. Knowledge management is a logical tool for lawyers to take advantage of to better practice and serve our clients – but its hard to get lawyers to buy in to it.

Perhaps there is hope in that as millenials start to take root in law firms they will just start to use social media tools to bring knowledge management into law firms from the bottom up.

Wiki anyone?