A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites, Part II

It's a great day to continue the series begun last week, since everybody seems to be talking about social networking over the weekend and today. The New York Times reported on the graying of Facebook. Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions posted a link to the first chapter of his book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, arguing that the "permanent chronicle of our private lives" that we're building on social networking sites is heading us for an "online collision between free speech and privacy." Vesna Jaksic at the National Law Journal and jury consultant Edward Schwartz (in his newly active and fascinating Jury Box Blog) both talk about what lawyers can learn about clients and witnesses on social networking sites.

All that and your jurors are out there too -- all reasons to learn the territory. Here's a continuation of last week's guide; when it's all done, I'll post it on a single page.

Business sites

With all the ads on MySpace and the hamster pictures on FaceBook, it's amazing it took so long for someone to develop a networking site for business. It's not clear that they're taking off, especially as FaceBook attracts older users. LinkedIn has a lot of people in it, but it doesn't encourage the kind of communication the broader sites do, so at least in my experience it's very quiet. (Word is they're developing more kinds of interaction.) LawLink is new, but people like Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs and Doug Cornelius at KM Space wonder if it will attract anyone when it's so small and other sites are so big. Anyway, examples are:

• Linked In, "Relationships matter"
• Ryze, "helps you expand your business network"
• LawLink, "The First Online Network Exclusively For Attorneys"

Niche communities

If you're nuts for a hobby, there's a social networking site for nuts like you. A tiny, random tip of that huge iceberg:

• Fatsecret, "the diet solution of the people, by the people, for the people"
• WetCanvas!, "Cyber Living for Artists"
• Fuzzter.com, "A Social Network for Cats, Dogs and All Your Fuzzy Pets"
• BakeSpace.com, "a place for cookers and cakers"
• Common Circle: "Powered by a mix of solar/wind energy and pure love, Common Circle exists to help support the progressive movement."
• Infield Parking, co-founded by NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., "leverages the power of social networking to bring together the millions of race fans eager to share their passion for the sport with fellow racing fans and also makes it easy for fans to connect directly with their favorite drivers," but hasn't yet mastered the art of the catchy tag line.
• Vinorati, "your wines and you"

Sharing sites

On a sharing site, the main point isn't your page, or your blog -- it's your stream. Users are there to share their images, video clips, jokes, music (or, nowadays, music recommendations), or expertise. Most of us breeze into YouTube or Flickr to look for a specific clip or image, but for frequent users, it's more than a resource; it's a community where you can learn a lot about a person by what she shares. Many artists, for example, use a Flickr "photostream" as their main face to the world.

Examples of sharing sites include:

Images

• Flickr (the biggest player), "Share your photos. Watch the world."
• Photobucket, "where millions manage their media"
• Picasa Web Albums (Google)

Video (and a little audio)

• YouTube (hands down the best-known sharing site on the Internet), "Broadcast Yourself."
• Funny or Die, a site said to be developed by Will Farrell and others "where celebrities, established and up-and-coming comedians and regular users can all put up stuff they think is funny." Will Ferrell's profile and what are billed as his picks are here.
• blip.tv, "We focus on shows"
• ComicWonder, where funny users call in jokes by phone
• Revver, "the viral video network that pays"

and of course niche sharing sites had to be next, like

• GodTube, "Broadcast Him," with the terrific tag line, "What would Jesus download?"

Music

The file-sharing music sites you've heard about are struggling as the Recording Industry Association of America pursues those who trade songs on line. (The RIAA's recent $220,000 verdict against a Minnesota woman got a lot of press.) If you go to Grokster, once an active music-sharing site, your screen will show nothing but a notice in huge letters: "The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. . . . YOUR IP ADDRESS IS [insert long number here] AND HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous." Okay, okay.

The Minnesota woman's music site, KaZaA, is still on line, and the trend in this area seems to be toward music recommendation sites where users post lists and short clips of what they like, but not the whole song. Examples of both types:

• KaZaA
• upto11.net
• MyStrands, "What you play counts."

Expertise

You don't think of Amazon.com as a sharing site? Think again. It was one of the first places where users could demonstrate their expertise, in self-published book reviews and "Listmania" lists of their recommended books on a topic. Now Amazon lets you expand your list into a "guide," with your explanatory text. One person's reviews, lists, and guides are all gathered in his profile, with links to "friends" just like any other social network.

Then there's Squidoo, brainchild of marketing guru Seth Godin, where users build a free web page called a "lens," with links and text displaying their expertise on any topic.

• Amazon.com
• Squidoo, "Everyone's an expert on something!"

Part III to come.

(Image by Leigh Blackall at http://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/64955397/; license details there.)