Is your company thinking of adopting a social media platform to replace its current website?  If it is, then your company is part of the majority of companies that have either implemented a social media platform, is planning to implement a social media platform, or will implement a social media platform but has no current plant to implement it.  George Colony – CEO of Forrester Research – in his latest speech cited that the public adoption of social media continues to increase.  Over the last two years, U.S. adoption of social media has increased 4% from 82% to 86%.  Similarly, the European Union’s adoption of social media has increased 5% from 74% to 79%.

Companies that have not operated a social media website will need to familiarize themselves with the laws that are unique to these types of websites.  Two bodies of law unique to social media websites are the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Communications Decency Act.  Companies will have to develop sound Terms and Conditions of Use agreements to address the new functionality of their social media websites.  Additionally, companies will need to consider whether to house their new social meda website on their premises or in the cloud.  I was recently interviewed by Finance and Commerce on cloud computing and how to integrate it into a company’s IT planning for 2012.  You can read the article here. Operating a social media website requires much more involvement by a company, but it is generally better to ride a trend that to buck it.