Let’s put an end to this pointless argument over whether a piece of recorded information is a ‘record’ or not a ‘record’.  How you and your organization labels an item of content is meaningless to a judge in a legal discovery procedure.  If the information exists at your organization, it is potentially evidence and subject to discovery and so should be managed throughout its entire lifecycle.  This applies to content in your records repository, SharePoint libraries, on file shares, on backup tapes, and in email inboxes.  It also applies to web sites, social media, instant messages and material stored in the cloud.