The US labour relations board has got it right on free speech and social networks, I believe.

Normally, people who criticise their companies or management on blogs or sites such as Facebook and are found out, get fired.

That has happened to some in the past, and is probably going to happen again until people discover how to share information and remain private.

Now, a judge at the US' National Labour Relations Board says a company violated free speech by illegally firing an employee after she criticised her supervisor on her Facebook page. In its judgement the board said comments on a social networking site are generally a protected activity.

Companies would violate the law by punishing workers for such statements.

The board is backing the employee in the complaint against American Medical Response, an ambulance service in Connecticut.

The company fired the emergency medical technician, in part over the Facebook issue.

In the US, the National Labour Relations Act protects workers' right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions or unionisation.

What's important here for companies no matter where they live is the statement that the board found the company's Facebook policy was "overly broad".

By extension, employees can post comments on blogs or Twitter them as long as they are relevant to work.

That is, one cannot comment on your supervisor's sexual habits.

While in the past companies were faulted for not having clear enough polices on employee use of the Internet, e-mail and social networking sites, many have now gone too far the other way. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, one of those international law firms dealing with labour and employment law, put out an advisory to its clients, warning companies to review their policies.

"Employers should review their Internet and social media policies to determine whether they are susceptible to an allegation that the policy would 'reasonably tend to chill employees'," the advisory states.

While US law does not apply in Bermuda, the advisory (www.morganlewis.com) should make managers think before applying policy.

Many policies are probably imported wholesale from the UK or the US and probably need amending.

Other commentators have pointed out that an employee criticising a company or supervisor on Facebook did not necessarily fall under "protected activity".

The most popular business website is Yahoo! Finance, according to eBizMBA, which calculates it attracts 35 million unique visitors a month.

The estimate is based on an average of each website's Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and US Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast. I suppose Yahoo! Finance is up there by giving investors the ability to track and graph a large number of stocks and markets. I used it a lot in the past.

The next biggest business site is CNN Money, with 34 million visitors, followed by the Wall Street Journal online (23 million), Google Finance (18.5 million), MSN MoneyCentral (16.95 million), BusinessWeek (16.25 million), Bloomberg (16.03 million), Forbes (16 million), MarketWatch (13.5 million), and the dear old Financial Times online (8.5 million).

The top ten shows a good mix of new and "old" media, with CNN holding its own with Yahoo! However, the rest are far behind, though the WSJ has managed to come in at third place, ahead of Google.

Old media is not losing, but it is not winning the battle for eyeballs and advertising, even though it had many advantages at the start of the race, and still does. A similar pattern holds for the top ten most popular news websites.

Yahoo! News, not Google, is number one, with 70 million unique visitors.

The rest are significantly behind. CNN is number two at 48 million, followed by MSNBC (47 million), Google News (46 million), the New York Times (38 million), new entry HuffingtonPost (28 million), Digg (27.5 million), Fox News (24 million), the Washington Post (22 million), and the LA Times (21.9 million). By the way, the BBC rolls in at 14th place with 18.5 million visitors.

To watch who is up and who is down (and to get some idea of why) visit www.ebizmba.com for a variety of rankings.

I recommend their ranking of the top ten best Flash websites.

Send any comments to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com