Anyone who reads this blog knows that I use Twitter, the social networking tool that allows users to communicate with one another in real time in bursts no longer than 140 characters long. I got hooked on Twitter by Workforce Management contributing editor and mega-blogger Kris Dunn, a Gen Xer, social networking hound and early technology adopter if there ever was one.

Twitter was designed to allow users to quickly update friends and colleagues on what they were doing, but it has turned into much more than that.

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue writes that “it’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room,” and that’s a pretty good description, but fails to really capture the wild variety of messages and information that are available there.

Rather than just communicating about the mundane matters of life to your family and friends, Twitter is also a tool to blast out news and information to anyone who has chosen to “follow” you and get the “tweets” that you send out. Although many people use Twitter to chatter and comment on just about anything that tickles their fancy, I use it primarily to alert my 400 or so Twitter “followers” that I have a new column or blog post available here at Workforce.com.

Everyone uses Twitter differently, but clearly, it’s been around long enough (since March 2006) that it has grown from a novel social networking tool into something else. Twitter has now become a potential workforce legal threat and a full-fledged HR issue.

How do I know this? Well, I just got an e-mail newsletter from the California Employer Advisor that discussed the issue of possible “Twitter Trouble” if you have employees who use it while on the job. Some of the potential issues that arise from employee tweets delineated by the advisor are:

• If an employee’s communications run through an employer’s servers, there’s the potential that network security can be compromised.
• Employers have no way of monitoring whether or not employees are disclosing confidential information or trade secrets in their Twitter communications.
• Like all electronic communications, information that is twittered during the course of business may be binding on employers, who often have no way of maintaining records of the communications, which are equally subject to subpoenas as other records.
• As short communications that are often made on the spur of the moment, tweets are vulnerable to misunderstandings, and can result in the exercise of poor judgment since employees may not think before they twitter.
• Like other forms of electronic communication, tweets can be used to make harassing or discriminatory statements for which employers may be held liable.
• When employees are twittering, they’re not working.

I don’t consider Twitter to be a huge workforce issue, but it’s clear from this legal newsletter that somebody does. And that brings up a point for every manager to remember: No matter how cool the social networking tool, the rapid growth of technology brings along an equally rapid growth of technology-related legal issues. It’s a good idea to get out in front of them before they have a chance to overrun you.

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