Increasingly, employers use social media to develop their businesses. A recent study states that more than 70 percent of online adults use some kind of social networking site, and more than 40 percent use multiple sites.1 Of the Fortune 500 companies, 77 percent maintain Twitter accounts, 70 percent are on Facebook, and 34 percent have a corporate blog.2 Social media usage frequently grows quickly, and traffic to an employer’s social media platforms may exceed traffic to an employer’s website.3
Some employers who have allowed or encouraged employees to promote the employer’s business on social media have discovered, too late, that they took insufficient precautions in establishing ownership of the social media. As we discuss in this column, legal disputes over social media ownership may arise where an employee’s efforts lead to the creation of content or the expansion of followers. This may occur, for example, when an employee uses a social media account for both business and personal promotion.
