One of the best discussions of the nascent "social learning" phenomenon (revolution?) is "A framework for social learning in the enterprise" (http://ow.ly/1cKvz). According to the author, "Social learning is how groups work and share knowledge to become better practitioners. Organizations should focus on enabling practitioners to produce results by supporting learning through social networks."

There is undoubtedly great potential value in social learning, assuming that we find ways to filter the vast amount of information (much of it self-promotional drivel) that already clogs the social-media pipeline and grows larger by the second. Counter-balancing that value, however, is the potential legal liability that comes with encouraging employees to "share knowledge" in a medium characterized by high-speed, reactive verbal jousting without an "undo" command.

How many of us have dashed off a half-baked comment in an e-mail and/or clicked "reply to all" with a message intended for only one person in the thread to see? And that's e-mail -- a medium that's considered way too slow for younger members of the modern workforce. Not only are Twitter "tweets" probably written faster and proofread less, their 140-character limit forces us to sharpen our thoughts to a finer point, and the finished product is available globally and findable via Google or Bing.

It's hard to imagine a more thoughtful gift to plaintiffs' lawyers and regulators. Proving "knowledge" or "intent" in a harassment claim or an insider-trading prosecution can be tough; typically there's no "smoking gun" in the form of direct statements, and lawyers have to assemble circumstantial evidence to create "inferences" that support their case. It's no secret that corporate e-mail archives have been a treasure trove for these lawyers over the past decade or more -- e.g., Henry Blodgett's notorious e-mail reference to stocks as "dogs" while he publicly maintained "buy" ratings for those stocks, a case that cost Merrill Lynch $100 million to settle.

Every plaintiffs' lawyer worth his salt will be including corporate social-media archives in all discovery requests and researching the web at large for comments (and photos and videos) helpful to his/her client's case. The more that companies encourage their employees to "share knowledge" freely and fully in the social-media realm, the more fodder they'll provide for the legal truism that "anything you say can and will be used against you."