A Tweet - So Much More than 140 Characters

The information you can get from a tweet goes well beyond the limited world of 140 characters.

Jason Krause points out that "screenshots of social media are simply not sufficient because social media files consist of more than just posts."  He suggests that with so much at risk in trial, you shouldn't take any additional chances that the jury may disregard your social media evidence or not give it enough weight.  It is the litigator's battle to "marshall all the facts" to support his or her evidence - in other words, remove any doubt that the evidence is authentic before the opposition has a chance to attack it.  In short, a litigator needs the metadata.

Due to the nature of any social media evidence, it is in a near-constant state of change: comments, likes, re-tweets.  A screen-shot is not going to capture this information, let alone accurately preserve it.  The best evidence is going to be "an archive that includes all original unaltered source files including HTML, images, CSS (style sheets), Javascript, linked files such as PDF's, and any other data referenced or linked to the page."

Unfortunately, not many lawyers are tech-savy enough (or simply do not have the time) to comb through social media for all this metadata.  Ideally, you want a solution that will capture both the post and the associated metadata in real-time, and then store it in a forensically sound manner. 

For more information on capturing any social media posts and the metadata, check out www.idiscoveryconsulting.com.