Social Media & Unions: Labor’s clone of “Facebook”

Labor has cloned its own fledgling Facebook-style social media site:

UnionBook is the social networking site for trade unionists.  Unlike other social networks such as MySpace, FaceBook and Bebo, UnionBook is advertising-free, respects your privacy and is specifically designed to serve the trade union movement.  Use it to meet up with friends online, post comments to discussion forums, create a blog, upload photos and so on.
http://www.unionbook.org/pg/pages/view/201/

Another page offers more information on why an alternative was needed. It says that Facebook had already deleted some activist groups and blacklisted some accounts for campaign activity.

Here’s the part that anyone doing employee communication should note:

For example, you can create blogs here.  UnionBook offers free blogs to every trade union member, every branch, every shop steward and every union committee.

You can create groups and the groups themselves can have blogs, documents and discussion forums of their own.  In other words, mini-websites.  And highly interactive ones at that.

If you’re still on the fence about social media, be aware that employees now have their own social media outlet – one free of your messages, your positions, and your control. How will you respond?