Online Social Business Communities & Mitigating Legal Risks They Can Bring Up

A online discussion started by a community manager for his company’s internal social network brought out an issue which is critical to the smooth operation of online communities both internal and external. One of the users on their internal business website network copied and pasted an article off another site possibly without realizing it’s a copyright violation. When you build a community for the business and have a number of different users actively adding to content, linking and posting, there are almost always a risk for copyright infringement in some form or the other. Even if not deliberate, not everyone will be as aware about copyright and licensing issues as the next person and without moderation of every single post and activity before publishing (which is not viable for most) it’s always possible some copyright violation happens on the site which can snowball into messy situation with the owners of the content.

It’s clear that it may not be possible to be 100% sure this doesn’t happen so the objective is always to mitigate the risk and ensure that everyone is aware of it. This is done through educating users and putting in a policy. While most people may not directly be involved with plagiarism, something as simple as adding a picture for a blog post they published and later discovering that picture was copyrighted is enough to start a legal course of action.

It’s important to create a comprehensive policy which explains things like use of images. video, the need to use quotes and references while using extracts of other peoples work and it’s just as important to be able to explain this is simple terms. If every user that signs up is made aware of the policy for using the community or network the risk of them doing any of this (at least knowingly) is reduced. However, it’s good to be able to consider and account for what can be done should this still happen. What do you do if there is still content posted which is a violation of policy or copyrights?

This is where administrative capabilities come in handy. If your community platform has good administrative capabilities it gives you the option to step in and moderate content and user activities where it’s really required. If the software being used doesn’t give you moderation abilities, it can put you in a tough spot knowing something needs to be done but doesn’t let you take any action before someone else does.

A number of platforms put together by assembling various open source software components don’t offer this level of administration which is then really not suitable in a business situation where you, as a business, are held more accountable for everything published online. It’s like having the most comprehensive policy in place and not having the ability to implement it. The ability to moderate the community and content is the last line of defense against issues caused by such copyright violations.

Here are a few things that can be done to reduce the risk of copyright and content duplication:

• Develop a user policy which is easy to understand and ensure all users have read the policy on sign up
• Re-enforce the policy through offline training for internal networks where location is not an issue and by discussing it on the community where it’s not possible to educate users offline
• Have a community manager or moderator who is assigned the responsibility of scanning the activity and content on the site daily and raising a red flag for any violation of the policy
• Contact users who have violated policy through internal messaging or email so they understand what the risks of their actions are.
• Moderate and take down any copyrighted content as soon as possible as a last resort

With a good user policy, constant awareness and the ability to implement the policy and keep the site clean and free from legal issues unwanted trouble can be kept at bay.

Related posts:

1. The Licensing Cost Reduction Angle Of Social Software Communities For Business
2. How An Online Community Can Add Credibility To Your Business Website
3. Online Communities – Migration And Control Over The Community Database

Building A More Inclusive Product Development Process With Social Software

While this may be easier to relate to for those who work in large enterprises, regardless of what size and level a business operates at, if you are a product company, product development is core to your being and the better you can make your product development process, the more success you’ll find around the corner. The challenge facing most product companies is how to step up the development cycle and get products to market quicker while being able to innovate and give customers exactly what they are looking for. It’s not that businesses are not listening to their customers while developing products, but often by the time they are ready and rolled out, customers are already looking for something better or competitors have swiped market share while the product was still in the works. What’s needed is:

• A quicker product development cycle
• Customers involvement and participation in the development process
• A more inclusive process where more minds can contribute and collaborate without involving inefficiencies

The problem with the last requirement is that the more people you involve in the process, the more inefficiencies you’re likely to invite. Inefficiencies of time, place, and communication. At the same time, if you can’t include more customers within the process, you’re gambling on the fact that the opinion of a small focus group or fewer people will reflect the way all customers will react to your final product. This is where social software for business collaboration has been able to provide solutions for product companies. By implementing a social networking based collaboration platform, a business can have a base to build a more inclusive product development process that is scalable. Employees, partners, product experts, and selected customers can be granted access to an online social collaborative environment where they can freely interact, share ideas, and jointly work towards developing new products.

Companies that have built their product development platforms on social software have seen significant improvements in their process and ability to get products to market sooner — giving a significant edge over their competitors. Here are just some of the advantages that companies have observed since they’ve adopted social software environments for their product development efforts:

• They have seen that, when placed within a company, the social architecture (that many people are now familiar with from social networking sites like Facebook , Orkut, LinkedIn, and others.) has encouraged greater interaction and activity, creating a conducive environment for collaboration. Also, the adoption of the platform was easier — and employees, project teams, and customers found they could interact freely.
• The platform is completely suitable for freely interacting with others, sharing ideas, opinions, collecting data and feedback, have open discussions, and have a very transparent working system that high level management management and just about anyone with access to the system can simply observe by just logging in and checking on current activity.
• Customers and project teams located in all places around the world can log into the same system and participate regardless of where they are. This means they don’t have to disturb their schedules and travel and also means they can have customers from the US, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, and any other country included in the product development process and get as wide a participative group as they need.
• There is a record of all previous interactions and conversations between each member within the platform — this becomes a great resource for the company well after the interactions have taken place. The system becomes a permanent resource for anyone within the process who needs access to that information.
• It fosters a truly open communication culture for open collaboration — the product development process need not be restricted to a fixed number customers and select project teams, but others within the business can simply pitch in suggestions or share their ideas if they can contribute something useful towards the development process.
• It’s highly scalable and very inclusive allowing wider collaboration and more sharing of ideas without being inefficient.

While each business will need to build on a social networking platform and customize the environment to work cohesively with their specific product development strategies and processes, the advantages of having a powerful collaboration platform to drive better products out more efficiently are clear. With the ability to include customers within the deepest levels of the product development cycle and still speed up their development cycles, we are bound to see businesses truly working with their customers.

Related posts:

1. Social Business Collaboration Software
2. Product Marketing And Social Networking Software
3. Social Software For Managing Customer Relationships