GIGAOM — Maybe Thomson Reuters was feeling nostalgic about the flurry of negative attention that both the New York Times and the Washington Post got last year when they came out with policies on the use of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook. For whatever reason, the wire service recently issued new guidelines for its staff, and they suffer from many of the same problems that both the NYT and WaPo policies did. All of these flaws boil down to one thing: A desire to control something that fundamentally can’t be controlled, and a fear of what happens when that control is lost...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — Last week, I attended a webinar from WOMMA where WOMMA General Counsel Tony DiResta discussed the importance of disclosure across social media. This conversation normally focuses on brand-blogger relationships but the same best practices and government guidelines may also affect your Facebook Page. Here are five things to keep in mind about your brand and disclosure on Facebook...

ADVERTISING AGE — Last week, a client told me that they don't allow employees to access YouTube at work. "Do your employees carry cellphones?" I asked. The answer was "yes," of course. Well then, most of them already have access to YouTube - right in their pockets. The fact is, resistance to social network access at work is futile. The Economist, in a special report on social networking, notes that a survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by the recruitment firm, Robert Half Technology, found that only one-tenth of them gave employees full access to such networks during the day, and that many were blocking Facebook and Twitter altogether. Here are five reasons companies should allow social networking...

EMARKETER — Social media usage has soared not just among the general population but also among at-work Internet users, who are heading to the sites for both personal and professional reasons in greater numbers. "The Collaborative Internet" report from Internet security firm FaceTime Communications found increases in the proportion of at-work Web users worldwide logging on to each network studied...

MACK COLLIER.COM — Remember that game where a group of people sit in a circle and one person whispers a rumor to the person next to them? Then that person whispers it to the next person, and so on until the rumor has worked its way around the circle. Then the last person tells everyone what the rumor is, so they can see how the story changed from start to finish. I was thinking about this game when Kevin Smith recently had his very public spat with Southwest Airlines...