The founders of today’s common social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn had absolutely no idea of the impact these social networking sites would have. What started out as a simple way for college students to keep in touch has become a worldwide network connecting not only individuals but businesses and organizations. This unexpected popularity has brought about a very important issue: SECURITY.

The ‘safety’ that users felt on these sites is slowly becoming questionable. These sites have become the places hackers and other ‘cyber criminals’ find their prey. The bottom line is everyone-moderators of these sites included must pay more attention to their online security.   You think your social networking site has done all they can to ‘ensure your safety?’

Security researcher Rishi Narang recently discovered a security flaw with LinkedIn’s use of cookies and, as a result, the site reduced the persistence of cookies it uses to identify users. Patches and updates from the social networks themselves occur on a daily basis in an effort to combat crucial security flaws. As of the writing of this article, in 2011, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have undergone updates 528 times, with over 50 updates occurring on Facebook alone.

The fact is no matter how hard owners of these sites may be trying, it will be hard to keep up to pace with hackers.  Apart from that is the problem of confidential information finding its way to wrong hands. An example of this is of  Scott McClellan, the chief technologist and interim vice president of engineering for HP’s new cloud services business. Scott ‘carelessly’ posted the company’s plans on his LinkedIn page which wasn’t supposed to go public yet.  Though the comment was later removed, the damage had clearly been done.

How can a ‘safer’ social networking site be created then? No doubt, these sites are doing all they can to try and update their settings. As users though, there is much that can be done to try and minimize the chances of becoming a victim of these cyber attacks.

Being careful before clicking on something our friends’ have posted will be a big step. We may be trusting by nature but clicking on unknown links may open the way for hackers to access our information.

Another factor has to do with confidentiality. Though you do have the right to rant and rave on your page, avoid mentioning things that you don’t have the ‘right’ to share. This is especially true when it comes to company policies or updates. Keep your personal social networking sites PERSONAL.

Keep yourself well-informed as to updates these sites have made security-wise.  You may have to update your profiles’ security settings to keep yourself protected.

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LONDON–( BUSINESS WIRE)–CrowdControlHQ, providers of online reputation management software, are advising brands marketers looking to embrace social media within their marketing strategies to implement social media-orientated management software to help successfully plan future marketing strategies.

In order for your business to make the most of social media, you have to keep updated as to what people are saying about you or your product. The reputation you build on these online networking sites will have a huge impact on the amount of business you gain or lose online.  Since monitoring everything can be a major task when done manually, online management software has been developed.

How does this software work? Basically, it identifies who like your product based on what they tweet or put on their wall. This will make it easier to monitor your fans. Why would you want to do that? Well, it will help you know what they like about your product and what they think you should improve on.

Being able to know these through social networking sites, you will be able to build up on those positive aspects and make sure you keep your fans. This will be a great way to plan your future marketing strategies.

Social networking can enable you to get valuable information from consumers very easily. No surveys, no costly campaigns, just you and your social media sites.

Learn more here.

When Remya, a Facebook user saw an application on her wall saying ‘Click here to check who
viewed your profile’, curious, she clicked on the link.

An hour later she realised her account had being hacked after friends complained that she
had posted malicious links on their Facebook walls. With Remya, her 250 friends also became
victims of the malicious software.

How would you know whether an application is authentic or is simply a ploy? One of the main things that these hackers use is arousing your curiosity. Once you click their link, you will be as good as giving them permission to enter your social media space. One of the recent examples of the cyber attacks that follow on Facebook are such video postings as ‘‘The last minutes of Osama Bin Laden’ .

Just why have social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter become the target of cyber attacks? For two main reasons:

• They are extremely popular. Millions of users worldwide have accounts on these sites. With this popularity, illicit activities can be spread with the click of the mouse.
• They are easy to access. The applications designed by these ‘cyber criminals’ can access anything from personal information to videos and whatever else you have on your site.

Is their any way to protect yourself from allowing your social media site to be hacked? Don’t allow unknown URL’s to access your site. Take precautions and keep your privacy settings updated.

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At the 2011 WWDC held at San Francisco on Monday, Apple formally announced its official social-media
association with Twitter, leaving behind Facebook, the biggest social networking site in the world. With
Twitter having less than half the members as compared to Facebook, many speculate the reasons behind
this initiative.

The bottom line is they seem to have reached the point where they had different visions of the future. When their ambitions seemed to have clashed, it was in obvious that some changes have to be made.
This differing in interests brought Apple to choose Twitter instead as its official social media partner.

Apple has always wanted to maintain a good relationship with its consumers which seems not to be part of those of Facebook’s ambitions.

The new operating system will allow Apple users to access all that they want from pictures to tweets and videos with a single log in. This will save all the hassle that previously was experienced from having to log in every time you entered a different application.

How this shift will affect Facebook is still to be seen. For now, Twitter has found a very good partner and is surely happy about it.

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