Should employers be able to track everything that their staff say online? Whatever the rights or wrongs, a new product will apparently enable them to do just that.

Social Sentry is a tool marketed by a company called Teneros, and its demonstration at a recent technology event has made some people uneasy. It’s apparently intended to enable employers to stop staff leaking sensitive information like financial results via email. But it’s so powerful it can track what an individual employee is posting on social media sites, even if he or she is using different identities.

It has long been established that an employee does not have a right to privacy when posting at work, using the corporate network. But privacy should be a given when posting from home or from a mobile phone. The question is, will this privacy be respected? If an employer suspects a particular individual of passing on restricted information, my guess is probably not.

And of course there will be a temptation to keep tabs on individuals, in order to understand how motivated they are, and to deal with issues before they arise. Arguably a business could make a respectable case for that. But it would still be an invasion of privacy, and potentially actionable in law. No one wants their boss looking over their shoulder when they aren’t at work.

More information here.

Marketers at Nestlé must be in a state of shock. The company has been caught off guard by the campaign launched against them by Greenpeace on social media sites since March 17, and seems unsure how to respond.

The protest is over Nestlé’s purchases of palm oil from an Indonesian company, which Greenpeace says has cleared rain forest to establish palm plantations. The clearances are causing huge concern, as the valuable rain forest is host to a huge number of unique species, including the orangutan, which could become extinct if it loses its only habitat.

The campaign started with a report on the company’s palm oil use published in Greenpeace’s website, accompanied by a mock KitKat commercial on the Web showing an office worker opening the candy’s wrapper and snacking on a bloody orangutan finger. Nice. The video has been widely shared across Facebook and Twitter and thousands of negative comments have been posted on the company’s Facebook page.

Nestlé mounted a robust defence, getting YouTube to remove the video, although this has not stopped it spreading. It was less successful when it tried to put out the fire on Facebook. Telling users it would delete their comments seems only to have enraged them further, and now its fan base, mostly protesters, has grown to more than 95,000. The brand is trying to convince consumers that its palm oil purchases are negligible, but the signs are it will have to work a lot harder to get that message across.

It’s a graphic lesson in just what social media can mean for a company. Ignoring it is not an option, but having a Facebook presence, as Nestle has, is not just a way for the brand to raise awareness, it provides an instantaneous way for consumers to tell it that its behaviour stinks. Opinion is now divided about whether it should maintain the dialogue or, since the damage is so bad, close the page down and start again.

Personally I’m with the protesters on this one – sacrificing the orangutans just to help our confectionary hold together a bit better is not something anyone can be happy about. But Nestlé is not the only global brand to use palm oil, or, for that matter, to engage in dubious practices that would make consumers hit the roof if they knew of them. Greenpeace’s success with this campaign will not go unnoticed, and other big brands must be wondering if they are going to be next.

Social media has had a big impact on elections in other countries in the past couple of years, notably Iran and the US. The Obama campaign really got a handle on the online thing, winning an important advantage over the Republicans.  It will be fascinating to see how social media affects a British election, and who benefits.

First signs are that the Tories are ahead, at least on Facebook, where a one-month review up until the middle of this month found 4,688 comments and wall posts had been made on the party’s fan page, compared with only 1,229 on the Labour Party’s page and 727 on the Liberal Democrats’. The Tories have 23,800 individuals connected to its fan page, while the other two have only 7,000 connections each.

More Conservative prospective candidates are on Facebook, 69% of the total. Among existing MPs, the Liberal Democrats are most strongly represented with 55%; the Conservatives have 38% and Labour 34%.

It’s a strong start for the Tories, but the key for all three parties where social media is concerned is turning friends into active supporters, prepared to spread the word. I expect we’ll be seeing quite a lot more about this in the weeks to come.

Here’s an interesting survey suggesting that a business really can benefit from a presence on social media. Nearly eight out of ten respondents said that following a brand on Twitter increased the chance that they would recommend it to a friend, and for Facebook the figure was a healthy 60%.

Why do users become brand fans? On Facebook, the main reasons were being a customer (49%), to show support (42%) or to benefit from discounts and promotions (40%). Just over a third said they did so because they found the brand entertaining. On Twitter, being a customer scored 51%, followed by discounts (44%) and entertainment (42%).

These are quite substantial figures, and should encourage marketers who are already active on either or both of these sites, or else provide an incentive for those who have yet to take the plunge.

Full details here.