Long Island Business News
Social networking has business set a'twitter
by Michael H. Samuels
Published: March 20th, 2009

Rich Kruse supports Tim Mazzei for Brookhaven supervisor.

Eric Alexander is begging for money.

David Pinkowitz is attending another meeting.

How do we know? Pretty simple, actually: They're telling us on Facebook and Twitter.

And they're not alone.

Hundreds of area business professionals have started to embrace online social networking as marketing, business and social tools.

Look around. Chances are someone you know at work is engaging in social networking as you read this. They're sending a Tweet, updating their status or posting online photos and videos. They're commenting on politics or sports, using company desktops, laptops and smart phones. They collect hundreds of "friends," update their status with event announcements and solicit advice, all while listing their favorite television shows, movies and books.

"It's a double-edge sword," said Alexander, executive director of Vision Long Island. "On the positive side, it does help you connect with people, but the downside is that it is a personal page. People can get to know your favorite horror movies or bands."

For some, like Alexander, it's not so bad. The business community already knows him, so an update about how he just sprained his foot playing basketball humanizes him.

Laurie Bloom, the director of marketing and communications for Uniondale's Rivkin Radler, regularly posts comments on Facebook about her personal life - trips to the car wash and dentist - as well as causes near and dear to her heart, such as The Humane Society.

On Twitter, Bloom mixes in details of her daily diet with postings on social media and marketing.

"It's mostly business," Bloom said. "That's the thought anyway. That was the reason for going into it. It was to try to expand my business contact network. And meet people and learn new things."

She's certainly been successful, with more than 1,000 followers on Twitter and more than 400 Facebook friends.

But there can be a down side to all those updates.

A recent Career Builder survey showed that one in five employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, up from 11 percent in 2006.

The survey of about 3,000 employers also revealed that more than 40 percent of job candidates posted information about drinking or using drugs. Forty percent also posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information on their social media page.

Jeff Pincus, a partner with Melville-based law firm Johs Avallone Aviles, said employees must be careful about what they post online because Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are public sites.

"Employers have every right to do that," Pincus said, adding that he encourages businesses to tell employees that they might inspect pages.

He added that employers could be considered negligent if they don't check their candidates out online. Doing so would, for example, avoid the embarrassment of hiring a bus driver who brags about drinking and driving on his Facebook profile.

But Mel Grimaldi, an attorney and partner at Meltzer Lippe in Mineola, said he advises his clients to leave social networking sites alone.

"I don't want any of my clients to do anything that could be considered an invasion of privacy," he said.

He said if a hiring director checks the social networking site of one candidate, then each candidate needs to be held up to the same standard. Otherwise job candidates can claim discrimination.

"Quite frankly, sometimes you have to take a step back and ask, 'What am I going to see if I go on Facebook?'" he said. "I do not want my client, the employer, to obtain information they otherwise could not ask for in an application or job interview."

Pincus, however, said employers are capable of walking the fine line. Sure, the company won't use personal information, such as a candidate's age or religion, against him. But the company does want to hire the best candidate.

"We want to unturn every stone that's reasonable to unturn without violating any privacy protections," he said.

And if you're updating your Facebook page on the company computer, you can forget about privacy protection, said Greg Lisi, a Rockville Centre-based attorney and a member of the Nassau County Bar Association's board of directors.

Company e-mail, the company computer, company Internet; that is all something the employer can look at," Lisi said.

He said workers have been fired for looking at pornography at work or insulting a boss in personal e-mail. It's up to the company to decide if updating a social networking site falls within those outlawed activities.

Still, Doug Rowe, a partner in the labor and employment practice group at East Meadow's Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman, said the employee and employer should use social networking to their benefit.

"You have to be smart enough to realize this is a marketing tool," he said. "They are marketing themselves. They should be aware that anybody in the world has access to this information. Be careful what you put up on Web sites. Use it in a manner that makes you most marketable to prospective and current employers."

David Pinkowitz, founder of DCP Marketing Services in Melville, started getting into social networking as a business experiment. He said he wanted to see what kind of benefit he could give clients by using the new media.

Now, he's hooked.

He is logged into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all day long, leaving the windows open on his computer while he works. He's even started his own movie blog, sharing a personal part of his life he never expected to put out for the whole world to read.

"You're forced to mix your social life and business," said Pinkowitz, who has more than 152 Twitter followers, but only 64 Facebook friends.

"That really is the culture. I've changed my approach to business networking because of what I learned on Facebook and Twitter," Pinkowitz said.