Privacy

As Spammers turn to social media to prey on users, it will become more and more important to differentiate yourself to succeed in business.

A recent Technology Review article, “Spammers Turn to Social Networks,” focused on the increasing threat of spam in the world of social media. The reason for the threat is an aura of trust, which makes people more apt to click on a strange link or befriend someone they don’t know. While it’s disappointing to see spam ruin the social media fun, it should also put honest social media marketers on alert. There is a thin line between you encouraging legitimate business through honest means and spammers using that mentality for bad.

The SSN Take: Build your marketing network slowly and avoid blindly attracting customers because you could be viewed as spam.

Patrick Roland, April 19, 2010

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In the rush to get imbedded into social media to improve your business’ marketing, you could be leaving yourself dangerously exposed.

Mashable’s article, “Chatroulette Founder Working to Preserve User Privacy,” recently detailed how this online phenomenon may be putting its users at risk. The site works to randomly connect two unknown people with audio and video chat. But a recent addition, blending the site with Google Maps and showing where each chatter is located, may have crossed a line. Without a way of opting out of the map, users clearly could be putting themselves at risk for stalking, identity theft or worse. Remember, this danger is not simply limited to Chatroulette.

The SSN Take: Do your research on privacy settings and don’t be in such a huge hurry to reap the benefits of social media that you get into unsafe situations.

Patrick Roland, March 29, 2010

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It was mafia boss Pasquale “Scarface” Manfredi’s “love of Facebook” that led to his arrest a few weeks ago.

“Social Networks, Criminal Networks?” describes the story of the Italian gangster, charged in over 20 crimes and a number of killings, who was traced to his hideout from a log-on to the popular social networking site. Moreover, the Justice Department now trolls sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, looking for clues criminals may inadvertently drop. It’s worked: in 2007 a man was arrested after putting “rest in peace” pictures of a man on MySpace – before the man was reported dead. Graffiti artist Cyrus “Buket” Yazdani gained such a huge following from his “tagging” feats on YouTube that it drew the attention of the authorities (as well as thousands of fans). And lastly, a man wanted for drunk driving plainly listed his city of residence on Facebook and MySpace. Police quickly tracked him down and arrested him.

The SSN Take: What’s worse than being a criminal? Bragging about it on the Internet.

Samuel Hartman, March 27, 2010

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How public should elected officials’ social media posts — during business meetings — be?

While also applicable to the most-powerful governing bodies in the land, it’s a Minnesota school board that’s putting the subject on its agenda. Veronica Walter raised the issue during a discussion by the Farmington School Board, reports Nathan Hansen in “School board ponders social media blackout” in the Farmington Independent.

“I just want to be careful as board members that we aren’t overstepping our bounds,” said Walter. “We dance very dangerously on the edge of being inappropriate with comments. That things can be misread.”

Most of the board members apparently agreed with Walter, but member Tim Burke called using social media “the price of doing business” in the modern world. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” he said. Burke is probably the board’s most active social networker. His Twitter account, on which he mixes personal and professional messages with comments about school district issues, has 2,829 followers.

The SSN take: It will be interesting is to see what information makes its way out of governing body and/or business meetings via social media.

John Sniffen, March 26, 2010

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With 1.6 billion of us now connected to a computer that is connected to the Internet, social media has formed its own community.

Reminiscent of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, social media has assimilated users into reporting live events which often result in changing those events. Forbes.com recently reported on this phenomenon in their article, ‘The Rise Of  The Social Nervous System”. Referencing the Mumbai attacks, Obama’s presidential campaign, and even tracking of the H1N1 virus, the author offers these as evidence of how a single virtual system has connected the physical world. He also points out that this growth has caused a shift in how we view privacy, taking it from a right to a responsibility.

The SSN Take:  The potential for ongoing learning with social media applications continues to grow.

Melody K. Smith, March 23, 2010

Note:   Post was not sponsored.

This week’s SSN Minute tackles the question, “Does online privacy exist?” David Thimme, contributor to the Strategic Social Network blog, takes a look at this issue. You can view the video from the SSN home page at http://ssnblog.com (just click on the SSN Minute logo) or click here to go directly to YouTube.com.

Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2010
This post was sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, provider of strategic information services to organizations worldwide.