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Bloomberg's new social media policy encourages reporters to use Twitter - but with stipulations. It might seem like an obvious move for a news organization these days, but some traditional outlets, including Bloomberg, have managed to hold off until now. Dan Fletcher, the new social media director for Bloomberg, told employees about the new policy in an internal memo, which we received from an anonymous source close to the matter. "While the policy is meant to extend broadly across all social networks, we're encouraging reporters and editors to get started with Twitter," he said. "Twitter is easy to use and has become a valuable news source for millions of users. It's the best way to help readers discover the work you're doing and monitoring conversations within your beat."

While i understand the logic behind the institution of organizational policies, it is easy for a policies themselves to be more detrimental than the things they are trying to prevent. In many cases, a policy may even have the exact opposite effect from what was intended. Something (many things, actually) tell me that this is one of those cases.

The Baltimore City Fire Department plans to implement new social media guidelines after Chief James S. Clack said he found that firefighters and officers were "crossing the line" by posting inappropriate or sensitive information online. The social media website Twitter has become a forum for griping about City Hall policies in 140 characters or fewer - the maximum allowed in postings. The new policy comes after fire personnel have written a number of heated, politically charged barbs aimed at the department, Clack, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the City Council over a recent budgetary decision to close three fire companies in the city

Research being carried out at Carlos III University of Madrid analyzes the key factors in climate change and the risks to public policies that it implies. This study approaches the issue from the perspective of Sociology, Economics and Law.

Liz Heron, the social media editor at The New York Times, is refreshingly honest about her paper's policies about Twitter and Facebook. Or lack thereof, as the case may be. "We don't really have any social media guidelines," she told the audience at the BBC's Social Media Summit. "We basically just tell people to use common sense and don't be stupid."

Has email become the new fax machine? Thierry Breton, Atos Origin CEO and Chairman, would have you believe so. Following through with a promise made earlier this year to eliminate email use among company employees, Breton plans to move beyond email within the next eighteen months and initiate a communication policy based on instant messaging and social media sites. As Atos Origin is a major international information technology company, the decision to abandon email has the potential to influence other companies' methods of communication among employees.

"Survey results revealed engineers' chief concern to be fear of exposing critical company intellectual property (IP), with 58.5 percent of respondents citing security as their primary hesitation. Loss of productivity was a worry for 40.1 percent of respondents, while 29.3 percent said company policy precluded them from frequenting social networking sites on the job."

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the launch of a new government initiative aimed at promoting digital literacy resources and collaboration. The federal Digital Literacy Initiative represents a major advance toward implementing the Knight Commission's recommendations for enhancing the information capacity of individuals through new collaborations, public policies and investments in technology. The centerpiece of the initiative is the DigitalLiteracy.gov portal, an online hub for librarians, educators, and other digital literacy practitioners to share content and best practices. It recognizes that Americans cannot compete globally without the skills and understanding to use technology and information effectively.

Most marketing departments work hard to establish a flawless reputation for their product or service. But new research from Tel Aviv University is showing that perfection is not all it's cracked up to be.

Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to polarize corporations and people in charge of networks, judging by a new report from OpenDNS. The sites showed up on both "top blacklisted" and "top whitelisted" lists covering the entire year of 2010.

Copycense points us to the bizarre news that the Massachussetts state legislature has decided to ban Twitter from office computers. While Facebook is still allowed, and officials can still tweet via their mobile phones, it's banned on computers. The Legislative Information Services dept is claiming that it's because Twitter is "vulnerable to viruses," but that's fairly bizarre reasoning. Twitter itself is not prone to viruses. Some users may post links to viruses, but that's true on Facebook as well. Besides blocking all of Twitter seems like a sledgehammer approach.

The study found that arts and crafts activities - such as painting, dancing and filmmaking - are closely related to success of the scientists, engineers and other innovators who create new companies and inventions that stimulate the economy. Yet during the past decade Michigan has cut funding for the arts by some 90 percent - from about $25 million in 2002 to $2.3 million this year. In Detroit, officials attempting to balance the budget have proposed large cuts to the city's arts and cultural institutions.

None of the top 100 companies to work for block social media access at the office, reports Erin Lieberman Moran, senior VP at the Great Place to Work Institute. Learn more about why employees should be trusted.