Tim Godwin, Scotland Yard’s acting commissioner, has revealed that he and his senior management team discussed shutting town Twitter as riots spread across the UK at the beginning of August.

Godwin discovered that his force did not have the legal power to shut down the social networking site and subsequently raised the subject with the government.

Mr Godwin told MPs at the home affairs select committee: “I contemplated seeking the authority to switch it off. The legality of that is very questionable. We did not request that it was turned off but it is something we are pursuing as part of our investigative strategy.”

Many of those taking part in the violence organised themselves on Twittter as well as BBM. BBM cannot be monitored by police as easily as Twitter can.

In fact, many of the discussions on Twitter helped police to stop further trouble: they secured the Olympic site in Stratford, east London, after talk on the site suggested that it was going to be targeted.

Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, said that he did not realise that the police had even considered shutting down social networks but that this option should be examined because Twitter and its counterparts had “allowed people to turn up at very short notice to demonstrate and riot”.

He said “We should look at whether we should give power to the police to order social media sites to behave in a certain way.”

Foursquare is one of a breed of new social networking programmes known as ‘geosocial networking’. As the name suggests, these programmes work based on user locations, whereby you can ‘check in’ at venues, earning badges and automatically updating any relevant social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

It’s a fun and engaging way to interact with friends and clients, with the emphasis on exploration and communication. As well as allowing you to interact geographically, Foursquare also allows comments and statuses to be posted on their service, encouraging community development.

If you run a local business, Foursquare can be an excellent social media tool, as the focus is on a geographical community in the real world, as well as an online community. Members of Foursquare frequently swap recommendations of venues, shops and meeting places and as there are rewards for unlocking venues and badges, businesses that are registered as venues receive a certain amount of free advertising just by having a profile on the site.

There is then the further option to attract mobile customers by offering special ‘Foursquare’ deals. Available to anyone who ‘checks in’ at your venue, these deals range from discounts to freebies for those crowned Mayor (the most frequent visitor across 60 days) of a venue.

As the site combines interactive travel guide with social networking, Foursquare also attracts comments and reviews on their various venues, creating a collection of personal recommendations that will encourage other users to attend.

If you’re looking to enhance your local profile in the wider world, then Foursquare could be the social media tool for you, opening up a world of opportunities that focus on your location.

The targets of any in-house communications team tend to be three-fold: firstly, to protect their company’s reputation; secondly, to publicise their company’s achievements; and thirdly, to help attract and retain the best staff for the company. This last point may sound like a job for the HR department, but if the first two targets aren’t met, chances are you’ll never achieve the third. Previously on this blog we’ve discussed social media in relation to targets one and two, but how can social media help with recruitment?

When recruiting via social media, the main aims are the same as any other campaign: know your audience; develop a strong, long-term strategy; and look to engage with potential employees.

Once you’ve begun a campaign, keep it going regularly. Whether this means blogging, updating social networking sites or website content, up-to-date content shows a dynamic and contemporary company which will attract talent to match. Sluggish sites with few updates and outdated information have the opposite effect and can be detrimental to your recruitment drives.

The ongoing growth of social media is a fantastic opportunity for recruiters, opening up an amazing talent pool which stretches far beyond the usual boundaries of agencies, job pages and speculative applications; it just requires the right strategy and the correct platform to take off.