Hell yea!! Social Media Go Public

Social media go public? That is not a news, we already know Facebook goes public two years ago. Twitter is planning to do IPO this year. Yep, but this is another story. This is about social media post that are recognized as public media, in par with newspapers and websites news list.

Last week US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a new rulings that allows dissemination of public company information through social media. The rulings is approved through regulation Fair Disclosure (FD). This is a new era of financial disclosure. It also ends the polemics where several CEO's and boards of public companies tweets or put something in their social media which affects public investors. Before the rulings, this will be considered an unintentional disclosure that they must do confirmation in other media to make full disclosure. The reason is because not every body have access to the information. 

Regulation FD was adopted by SEC since 2000. The The objective is clear, to prevent insider trading of public company. As this company is owned by public, every stock holder must equally informed to ensure fair trade. There are two main principles of regulation FD, they are;  whenever the company (issuer) intentionally disclose information, it must be done through public disclosure, and if it un-intentionally disclose anything, it must prompt through public disclosure. The objective of this regulation is clear, public must have equal information and prevent the company's executive and boards to misrepresenting the information for their interest. 

In my opinion, this another leap of social media. It does not just mean that social media are now used by public companies' executives and investors, but indicate further evolution of social media. It indicates the invasion of social media to a "more serious" world instead of it's casual look and styles. 

The question next is what are the effects of this rulings to executives who are social media users. In my opinion there are several possible effect that we can expect  from the development. First, this ruling will strengthen the position of social media in established world. If to this day the most popular accounts are artists and public figures, we can expect that this development will make executives tweet will become more popular. Second, this more established development will make understanding on social media and social media strategy becoming more important. I think one day we can see the social media do and don't will be part of our do and don't lists before entering job. Third, with addition of this new line of communication, the corporate's reports and disclosure must adapt. and lastly, we can expects executives must begin to think about their personal social media strategy. Maybe if you are an executives, you must care about your privacy setting more, or else you might will end in trouble. 

There are probably more possibilities, and you may add it to the list.