As it stands today, FINRA considers re-tweeting “adoption”–attributable to the firm and, consequently, probably prohibited. That was one of the few clear surprises in FINRA’s Webinar on Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites held today.

Adoption and entanglement are two concepts “borrowed” from the SEC and applied to third-party posts in FINRA’s Social Media Web Sites Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web Sites. The guidance was released last week and elaborated on in today’s Webinar, which attracted 700 registrants.

Firms are free to develop and define what adoption and entanglement means to them, said Vice President and Director, Advertising Regulation, Thomas A. Pappas, leaving a glimmer of hope that a firm could define adoption less narrowly. Using Facebook’s Like feature is also adoption, confirmed Amy C. Sochard, Director, Programs & Investigations, Advertising Regulation, with no apparent hesitation.

Training, supervision and personal use were focuses of the Webinar, which was a mix of presentation and question-answering. Chad Bockius from SocialWare (@bockius) provided a running account of the Webinar using #FINRASN and we recommend it to you.

Strong interest in social media appears to be driving several FINRA deliverables. A replay of today’s Webinar will be available in a few weeks, and Pappas said a podcast and training offering is in the works. An additional Webinar “Implementing Compliance Procedures for Social Media” has been scheduled for March 17.