I'm sure most of you know about State Sen. Vincent Fumo and his recent legal troubles (this article will give you some background if you're unfamiliar with the case.)

I was just watching Action News and saw a "breaking news" story which said the Fumo case may have to be declared a mistrial.  Why?  One of the jurors posted details of the trial on Facebook and Twitter.  (Yes, it's true.  Read more about it here.)

This raises the question; can these social networking tools be a hazard?  (I'm going to, for the sake of the question I posed, ignore the fact that this juror is a complete moron.  I think that goes without saying.)  The argument can now be made that these networking tools provide an outlet for jurors, or anyone involved in thse case for that matter, to spread inside information to people world-wide.

Nevermind that details of the case were leaked out to the public, but this in turn may cause a mistrial creating the possibility that Fumo will avoid punishment for his alleged actions. (I'm going to, for the sake of the being objective, call Fumo's actions "alleged".)

Could this kind of problem lead to jurors being banned from using social networking tools in the future out of fear that they may leak information to the public?

Apparently there is a new trend on Facebook. While the site may have started off being primarily used by young college aged students this has been changing for quite some time. If you look at the article on the website Inside Facebook; Tracking Facebook and the Facebook Platform for Developers and Marketers the fastest growing demographic is actually women over 55 years of age.  When looking further in the article we learn that, “45% of Facebook’s 45.3 million active users in the US are now 26 years old or older.” (Smith, 2009) This is quite a change from its original intent.  The article states, “while the fastest growing age group by total users is still 26-34, the number of women over 55 on Facebook grew by an astounding 175.3% since the end of September [specifically September 30^th 2008- February 2^nd 2009].” (Smith, 2009)  Another high growth area is men and women between 45-54 in the US.  This group grew 165% between September 30^th 2008- February 2^nd 2009.   (Smith, 2009) Overall, on February 2^nd 2009 “Nearly a quarter of all Facebook users were over 35 years old.” (Smith, 2009)