James L. Jorgensen, a partner at the Hoeppner Wagner & Evans LLP firm spoke on the value and misuse of social networking sites within the business world. He focused mainly on Facebook, or “My Face” as he originally thought it was called, and the effects that public information has on business relationships. 
Between 45 -50 % of employers now use the internet for the hiring process, to screen potential applicants, and 35-40% use it to search for existing information on current employees, which persuades decisions on promotions, transfers and other job-related inquiries.
However, while this may sound like a positive new development for prospective employers, they are also able to obtain information that wouldn’t normally be permitted lawfully through the employment process. Because this information is made public, however, there are no safeguards to protect any individuals from this invasion of privacy.
“You wouldn’t be able to ask me, ‘Jim, are you bipolar?’, but now with social networking sites, you might be able to find that information publicly.”
“The law is racing to catch up with this technology…the most recent law that applies to these questions dates back to England, and they weren’t using Facebook”, James said about the ambiguity of net laws.
He went on to talk about the relationship between employers and employees, saying that there’s an “intrusion into the inclusion”, meaning employers should not intrude on the privacy of an employees social networking site unless there is a very clear business reason as to why.
“Curiosity is not a good reason”, he said, “keep the intrusion very narrow to what the purpose is.”
At the same time, other public sites, such as Youtube with presumably no expectations of privacy, can be used to obtain information about privacy violations committed by an employee or destruction and defamation of properties. This knowledge of employee activity could be brought to a stop before causing detrimental damage to the productivity and growth of a company.
He shared guidelines for both employees and employers on how to handle online personal blogs, video logs and social networking sites to help maintain a healthier relationship between employers and employees. Because of the lack of law-enforced guidelines on the web, he hoped to enlighten those less-informed individuals on how to better tackle this massive information wave, and he did a fantastic job of it, giving both practical and more specific regulations for searching and obtaining information.