John Crawford co-authored an article in the October 2012 edition of The Transportation Lawyer magazine.
“’Social media’ is a relatively new term and covers a wide range of websites that allow users to create an on-line profile to share pictures, comments, messages, news stories, and music. The best known of these is Facebook, which has approximately 845 million users, and 483 million of those users are active every day. MySpace, which was in significant decline, recently experienced a period of renewed interest when new investors including Justin Timberlake purchased it. At the time this article was written, Twitter was closing in on 600 million users, and was adding accounts at the rate of 12 per second. Anyone with a Facebook account can tell you that the users post witty comments about current events, trade barbs after football games, and post an unbelievable amount of personal information. Discovery relating to social media has become an integral part of personal injury litigation. Social media provides a new way to see if a party’s postings undermine his or her claim.