Social media archiving isn’t just smart business strategy; it’s an imperative. Any website, blog, or social media presence you have is subject to the same regulatory and legal obligations as any other form of communications, and the consequences of not archiving can be dire.
The Social Media Archiving Obligation
The judiciary has offered little specific guidance on the discovery of social media in litigation, but there is little doubt that social media is discoverable. Rule 26 (a)(1)(ii) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states that “all documents, electronically stored information, and tangible things that the disclosing party has in its possession, custody, or control and may use to support its claims or defenses” are discoverable.
According to the most recent Fulbright and Jaworski Litigation Trends Survey, almost one-fifth of all respondents report that in the previous year their companies had to preserve or collect data from an employee’s personal social media account. In addition, 13 percent of all respondents have had to produce, as part of discovery, electronic information stored on a social media site in the past 12 months.
To fully take advantage of social media, your organization needs to be able to:
- Create a complete and defensible social media policy and litigation response plan.
- Create a forensically accurate archive of social media and web content.
- Manage your archive with de-duplication functions to eliminate redundant copies of tweets, posts, and other content.
- Use sophisticated search capabilities to index and find content.
- Quickly produce information in the event of litigation or regulatory demands.
Specialized Archiving
Nextpoint takes the preservation and archiving of your social media one step further than any other solution. Dynamic social media content often differs depending on who is viewing it and how they are accessing it. By utilizing the social network’s application programming interface (API) we are able to ensure a forensically sound archive that captures all necessary data points—including all metadata and native files.
Ten Steps to Social Media Discovery Readiness
To learn more about social media archiving, download Ten Steps to Social Media Discovery Readiness, our free, and easy-to-follow eBook for managing the discovery of social media. If properly deployed, the steps below can give you the confidence to carry out a reasonable and defensible strategy for preserving, reviewing, and producing social media content.