Here at Attorneys Online, Inc., we are constantly trying to learn more about social media as a way to further drive traffic and gain online exposure for our clients. This week, our Social Media Department, along with everyone else on the Internet, has been extremely concerned with the changes in Facebook’s terms of service, which stated that all content that has ever been placed on your profile is the property of Facebook. Forever.

A few days later, after noticing an uproar from Facebook users, the popular social networking site reverted back to its old terms. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post on Tuesday:

“Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.
Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.”

What does this mean for lawyers using Facebook? As of now, all content that you put on your Facebook profile or business page will remain your property. If these terms of service change in the future, that could have an impact on the information we have already added to Facebook, as well as the information we will continue to add.