Facebook Inc (FB), Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): The SEC Wants You to “Friend” Corporate America

The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Sure, the SEC says companies still need to take “steps … to alert the market about which forms of communication a company intends to use for the dissemination of material, nonpublic information, including the social media channels that may be used … [because without] such notice, the investing public would be forced to keep pace with a changing and expanding universe of potential disclosure channels, a virtually impossible task.”

But that’s just my point. By adding Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to the mix, the SEC is making investors’ lives more complicated — not less. Now, any time a company suggests that it might disseminate information via its Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) page in the future, we all have to rush out and “friend” it just to make sure that when news comes out, we’ll hear it at the same time everyone else does.

And really, do you want to have to “friend” ExxonMobil and Bank of America? Do you want to wade through piles of corporate junk mail on your Facebook feed just to be sure you don’t miss any of the good stuff? Because now you’ll probably have to.

A modest suggestion
Personally, I think the SEC made a serious error in this report. If a company wants to “double notify” people about things it thinks are interesting, that’s fine. Publish on the corporate website. Publish on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). Heck, go wild and publish on MySpace or Friendster if you want to. But any time a company does this, it should also have to quickly duplicate the notice in an 8-K filing with the SEC so those of us who don’t want to “friend” the corporation can still get the 411.

Otherwise, in trying to make life easier for corporate PR officers, the SEC is just making life harder for the rest of us.

The article The SEC Wants You to “Friend” Corporate America originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Rich Smith.

Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), and Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA). The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Tesla Motors.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.