The power of social media is being felt right here in Montana, as the city of Bozeman is receiving at least one e-mail per minute about its policy of requiring job applicants to provide their login and password information to social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

From the original story that aired on KBZK in Bozeman (link):

At the heart of the uproar is a requirement included on a waiver statement that job applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records." That is generally considered routine in standard background checks.

The City form then states: "Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,"  There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, user names and password information and their passwords.

Since Montana's News Station first aired the story about the city's policy yesterday, the story has spread like wildfire across the internet, fueled at first by the micro-blogging service known as Twitter. One it was posted there, hundreds - perhaps thousands - of Twitter users began re-publishing the story, nearly all of them harshly critical of the policy.

From there, the story quickly spread to other social media sites, including Slashdot, Boing-Boing, and ReadWriteWeb - some of the largest and most trafficked online communities.

The story has even reached across the ocean, with the United Kingdom's Guardian website branding Bozeman as the "villain of the week" in the Liberty Central section.

Back here in Montana, the poll accompanying the story has already received over 5,000 votes within 24 hours - with 98% voting against the city's policy.

KRTV spoke with the human resource manager for the city of Great Falls, who said that their application process is nothing remotely similar to Bozeman's.

For most city employees there is no check into social networking sites. She did note that sites such as MySpace and Facebook are looked at for potential police department employees, but applicants generally do not have to provide their password for those sites.

The policy is similar for Cascade County employees.