According to Twitter, they have 218 million active users as of their October 3, 2013 IPO (Initial Public Offering) and according to Facebook, they have 1.11 billion people using the site each month, with 665 million active users each day as of March, 2013.
Interested in reading more? You can access these and other law review articles on HeinOnline with your Law Library card:
- Ensuring an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Media, a 2012 Duke Law & Technology Review article
- Keep Your "Friends" Close and Your Enemies Closer: Walking the Ethical Tightrope in the Use of Social Media, from St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice and Ethics and
- Yes, Jurors Have a Right to Freedom of Speech Too!...Well, Maybe. Juror Misconduct and Social Networks, from the First Amendment Law Review
Take a look at the books and CD-ROMS which are available to borrow at any one of our 17 Trial Court Law Libraries by clicking on this link.
Don't have a library card yet? Stop in to any of our 17 locations to get one. Here's the link to our locations and hours of operation.
Can't get to a Law Library soon? Here are some on-line articles you can access right now:
- Do Judges Really Understand Social Media?
- Judge's Use of Electronic Social Networking Media - ABA Formal Opinion 462.
- The New York Civil Liberties Union's article on People v. Harris (Challenging court order requiring Twitter to disclose information on an individual's use of the site).
- Twitter's Guidelines for Law Enforcement and Facebook's Guidelines for Law Enforcement.
Did you know the Library of Congress acquired the entire Twitter archive in 2010? Here's the link to their January 2013 update on their progress.
Three years ago Twitter was processing more than 50 million tweets a day. In October, 2012, they were processing nearly half a billion tweets a day. Can you imagine how many tweets they are processing today?
Here's a link to their white paper which outlines the progress and challenges the Library of Congress faces with the Twitter archive they acquired as of April, 2010.
Did you know the Library of Congress has its own Twitter feed?
As noted in People vs. Harris, "The world of social media is evolving, as is the law around it...As the laws, rules and societal norms evolve and change with each new advance in technology, so too will the decisions of our courts...The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences to your public posts. What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you."
Sources: Using Social Media to Win Cases, an MCLE publication, 2013; Facebook, Twitter, Library of Congress and Yahoo websites.
