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Social Media and Its Effects

By Michael C. Lynch and Lystra Batchoo

In any given moment of the day, millions of people all over the world are blogging, disseminating their activities or opinions to their followers on Twitter, sharing photos through Facebook, updating their MySpace account with recent news, or engaging in other online activity. In fact, two-thirds of the world's population that has access to the Internet visits social networking or blogging sites. In a March blog post, one of Twitter's co-founders claimed that one billion tweets are posted in the course of a week (with an average of 140 million tweets per day) and that almost 460,000 accounts on average were created per day in the previous month. LinkedIn boasts that it has over 90 million professionals covering hundreds of industries. Facebook claims that it has more than 500 million active users.

It is no overstatement then to say that social media has become a way for people to put their lives on display for all to see, attain semi-celebrity status, or generally participate in a growing cultural trend of over-sharing. Unless you have been completely oblivious to advancing technology, you probably have heard about these types of social media websites and tools or maybe even have used them in your personal life. But social media has infiltrated other aspects of life, going beyond merely a personal pastime to becoming a vital part of professional industries. Indeed, in the legal world, the role of social media has become more prevalent in the last five years. Attorneys and their clients are grappling with how this emerging technology will affect their cases. From reshaping the scope of discovery to potentially becoming evidence to support claims, one of the most significant implications of social media is how it can help shape litigation strategy by introducing new sources of information and serving as innovative tools in litigation.

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