The Price of One Anonymous Comment? Your Job

Most of us have blogs, right? How do you react to anonymous vulgar comments? Hit SPAM, right? Yeah, me too. And so did the Director of Social Media for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Kurt Greenbaum. The first time. But when the anonymous commenter again posted the single-word vulgarity, Greenbaum tracked his IP address—to a school.

Probably thinking he was reporting a misbehaving student, Greenbaum contacted the school and explained the situation. Six hours later, the school called back: they’d found the commenter—an employee. After they confronted him, the employee resigned.

Most of us probably have an intrinsic notion that the anonymous commenter and Greenbaum both acted inappropriately (although there was no way for Greenbaum to know he was turning in an employee and not a student)—but perhaps the more important question is whether they were acting legally.

Greenbaum, a Post-Dispatch employee, should be bound by the paper’s online privacy policy, which states:

We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information.

However, at the beginning of the policy, they stipulate that “Your IP address does not contain personally identifiable information, nor does it identify you personally.” So is that individual user information? Sounds like it’s not.

And the Post-Dispatch’s ToS is an exercise in CYA (they define “submission” to include comments):

• You automatically waive any claim that any use of such content violates any of your rights, including privacy rights, publicity rights, moral rights or any other right, including the right to approve the way we use such content.
• You are responsible for the content of all Submissions and acknowledge that third parties may hold you responsible for content related claims including libel, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of likeness and disclosure of confidential information.
• You shall indemnify, defend and hold us, our parent company and our affiliated entities (including our officers, directors, owners, agents and employees) harmless from all liability and costs incurred by those indemnified in connection with any claim arising out of any breach by you of the above representations and warranties and for any claims related to the content or your Submissions.

And, naturally, the ToS stipulates that using the site to “upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available content that is harmful to minors in any way, or that is harassing, harmful, threatening, abusive, vulgar, obscene, defamatory, libelous, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable” violates the ToS, too.

And how were Anon’s actions illegal? Well, setting aside possible obscenity charges (while legally problematic, “obscenity” is not protected under the First Amendment), the school probably also has policies—policies that dictate the use of school resources. Most likely, this comment was made on school time, from a school computer, using the school’s Internet connection. Somehow, I can’t imagine there’s a provision in the policy that allows for use of school resources for posting vulgar comments online. By violating these policies, the employee could face discipline or even termination.

What do you think? Would these policies hold up in court?

Seriously, Do Teens Tweet?

Yesterday, we went in search of Twittering teens, after the NYT couldn’t find any. Time and again we’ve heard statistics tell us that teens don’t tweet—or do they?

The Silicon Alley Insider took a look at comScore’s recent numbers and charted them. The chart says it “measures unique visitors relative to their presence on the Web as a whole”—meaning that if 16% of Internet users are teens, and 16% of Twitter users are teens, they’d be at 100.

For July, teens (well, teens and young adults) are at 120—meaning there is a higher percentage of Twitter users that are teens than Internet users that are teens. Also note that the 12-24 bracket is the only one on an upward trend since June.

But really, we kind of already knew this. When we looked at the much-hyped “Teens don’t tweet!” headlines three weeks ago, we saw yet another lie-with-statistics and took it to task. The Nielsen company issued a chart that said only 16% of those aged 2 to 24 tweeted, while 64% of those aged 25 to 54 tweeted. But:

But the chart on the other hand looks a little misleading. Let’s start with the age bands—technically, you’re supposed to be 13 to use Twitter (doubtful that they can enforce the TOS, but, hey, let’s humor them). If we assume (probably incorrectly, but that’s kind of moot) that the distribution in the 25-54 range is roughly equal and readjust the age banding accordingly, then we get:

Yes, teens and young adults are still slightly underrepresented. But remember this leaves out entirely everyone using phones to Tweet—and if I had to guess, I’d say that the same age group was slightly overrepresented on mobile usage.

So yes, maybe teens fear the publicity of Twitter. Maybe they prefer texting. (My 17 year old sister does.) But let’s get real: teens are on Twitter, just like they are on the Internet.

What do you think? Are teens on Twitter, or are we all just boggled by numbers?

Do Teens Tweet?

Yeah, yeah, yeah—I’m sure we can all name some anecdotal evidence of teens who either hate Twitter or who can’t get off it. But by and large, according to a new Nielsen report, teens just aren’t on Twitter.

Or are they? The chart from the report looks at users on Twitter.com (as opposed to on phones or desktop clients):

Let’s start with the facts: In June of this year, teens and young adults made up 25% of the online population, which means that they’re disproportionately not using Twitter. Or Twitter.com. I can accept that.

But the chart on the other hand looks a little misleading. Let’s start with the age bands—technically, you’re supposed to be 13 to use Twitter (doubtful that they can enforce the TOS, but, hey, let’s humor them). If we assume (probably incorrectly, but that’s kind of moot) that the distribution in the 25-54 range is roughly equal and readjust the age banding accordingly, then we get:

Yes, teens and young adults are still slightly underrepresented. But remember this leaves out entirely everyone using phones to Tweet—and if I had to guess, I’d say that the same age group was slightly overrepresented on mobile usage.

Are teens not on Twitter? Maybe. The comments on Mashable point to at least one possible explanation—teens want to share personal information, but they want the granular privacy controls Facebook offers.

What do you think? Are teens on Twitter? If not, why not?

Facebook Sued for Stifling Competition, Click Fraud

It’s a saga we’re all familiar with by now: create a pretty awesome web service, start a trend, become a media sweetheart, make lots of money (VC or acquisition), get slapped with a lawsuit. Or two. Or fifty billion. Facebook added two more lawsuits to its heap recently: a countersuit from Power.com and a click fraud proceeding.

Facebook filed suit against Power.com in December. Facebook claimed the one-stop social-media aggregator was infringing upon their copyright, violating their TOS and scraping proprietary data. At the time, we weren’t sure whether “proprietary data” included user information.

Power.com finally decided not to take this sitting down. TechCrunch reports that Power.com has now filed a countersuit, claiming Facebook is “unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things.”

Facebook also faces legal action from RootZoo, an erstwhile advertiser. After analytics from their Nov 2007-June 2008 campaign varied greatly from Facebook’s reported data, RootZoo requested Facebook’s logs and a refund. Facebook said no to both.

RootZoo’s complaint uses 2 June 2008 as an example of the discrepancies between the two. While Facebook reported 804 clicks on their ads, RootZoo’s analytics programs show 300 clicks from the social networking giant.

While there have been rumblings about Facebook click fraud for some time, this is the first suit in the matter.

What do you think? Does Facebook have anything to worry about from these legal claims against it? Is there anyway to avoid getting slapped with lawsuits once people see you’re making some money?