Senate Rules Committee pondering Facebook use

The tradition-bound Senate, historically slow to adjust to trends like popular elections and civil rights, is lumbering toward updating its approach to a less weighty issue: Facebook.

After months of review and talks with site operators, the Senate Rules Committee hopes in coming weeks to announce updated guidelines for how members can use the popular social networking site and other third-party Web sites, Senate aides said.

Committee staffers are in talks with owners of sites including Facebook and Twitter to forge agreements to add them to a list of sites that accept Senate Internet regulations, aides said. Under the agreements, the sites would agree to limit partisan and commercial advertising on lawmakers' pages.

"The Rules Committee has been having ongoing discussions about bringing third-party Web sites into compliance for official use by Senate offices," a committee spokesman said. "Those discussions are continuing on a number of fronts, but so far there are no agreements in place yet, except with YouTube."

Following an agreement with YouTube, members can embed video from the site on their Web sites.

The proposed policy follows the Rule Committee's approval in September of rules officially allowing lawmakers to post content from sites like YouTube, Flickr and Twitter on their Web sites without violating franking rules, which were developed to govern lawmakers' mailings but now cover various forms of communication. Many members had already been doing so.

The update gave senators discretion to use third-party Web sites if their usage follows the Senate's Internet Services Usage Rules and Policies. The rules were previously updated in 2005.

A growing number of senators have Facebook pages and some have received attention for their Twitter use. But confusion continues over how exactly franking rules affect use of Facebook and other social networking sites.

Senators face relatively few rules for how their campaigns use third-party sites, but official use remains "a gray area," one staffer said.

"A lot of new media staffers have a lot of good ideas, but aren't sure when they are crossing the line," said John Wonderlich, policy director at the nonprofit Sunshine Foundation, which wants the Senate to reduce restrictions on members' new media use.

"We see a lot of confusion from staffers on these issues," Wonderlich said.

On June 3, Rules Chairman Charles Schumer and ranking member Robert Bennett sent colleagues a letter highlighting "issues for members to consider as they decide how they will use Internet-based new media."

The letter warned Senate offices not to use official resources to put promotional, political or commercial content on the sites, and encouraged them to ensure that public commentary is distinguishable from what they post.

The Rules Committee review has been under way since at least March. The committee's Democratic staff director repeatedly declined to discuss the effort, saying an announcement would come after a policy is formalized.