Another Real Example on Using Social Networking Platform

Another article from Hong Kong Economic Times dated on 24 June 2009.

Written about the use of Blog help running the business.

Also mentioned that Social Networking can gain WOM from users.

Real Example on Using Social Networking Platform

Being a social networking platform, Facebook become a very popular tools for company to promote their products or services online through advertisement on Facebook or tailor-made games. Here attached an article from Hong Kong Economic Times dated on 3 June 2009 regarding to the frequent use of social networking platform - Facebook by different brands in the market.

Social Networking - Cathay Pacific - Get Ready for Sevens

Hong Kong Sevens is the big sport event in Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific is a sponsor and Official Airline every year. In 2009, Cathay Pacific invited fans to be part of action by joining “Get ready for the Sevens” video competition to win grand prize. Participants needed to submit a 15-second video showing how they get ready for the Sevens. The top three videos were shown on the big screen at the Hong Kong Stadium on the final day of the competition.

Cathay Pacific promoted this competition through additional online social media:

Cathay Pacific Blog: Throughout March, they regularly posted new stories related to Hong Kong and the Sevens. For people coming to Hong Kong, it could help them to get more.

Other Channels: Cathay Pacific posted the updated information on different social networking websites. People could meet other fans and give feedback on Facebook, or get the latest updates on Twitter, or share photos on Flickr.

HOW DOES YOUR TEAM GET READY FOR THE SEVEN?

CX on Facebook
CX on Twitter
CX on Flickr
CX on YouTube

We can see that Cathay Pacific is using social networking to communicate with their customers very well.

How to avoid identity theft, phishing scams, viruses and spyware when you use social networking sites?

10 tips for social networking safety
Published: September 18, 2008
Related Links
•
Recognize phishing scams and fraudulent e-mails
•
12 safety tips on blogging for parents and kids
•
Signs of viruses: Are you infected?
•
Strong passwords: How to create and use them

Social networking Web sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.
As the popularity of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. Hackers, spammers, virus writers, identity thieves, and other criminals follow the traffic.
Read these tips to help protect yourself when you use social networks.
1.
Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages. (For more information, see Approach links in e-mail with caution.)
2.
Don't trust that a message is really from who it says it's from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they're from your friends, but aren't. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out. This includes invitations to join new social networks.
3.
To avoid giving away e-mail addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your e-mail address and password to find out who else is on the network. The site might use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you've ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Social networking sites should explain that they're going to do this, but some do not.
4.
Type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use your personal bookmarks. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen.
5.
Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves might create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering.
6.
Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. You will be providing personal information to this Web site, so use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card.
7.
Assume what you write on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print the information or save it to a computer.
8.
Be careful about installing extras on your site. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications in order to steal your personal information. To download and use third-party applications safely, take the same safety precautions that you take with any other program or file you download from the Web. For more information, see Before you download files, help protect your computer.
9.
Think twice before you use social networking sites at work. For more information, see Be careful with social networking sites, especially at work.
10.
Talk to your kids about social networking. If you're a parent of children who use social networking sites, see How to help your kids use social Web sites more safely.

Souce: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/socialnet.mspx

Daily news from Social networking

There are many groups using social networking webs to promote or express their ideas to draw people attention, It will become a talking point and raise awarenesss on specific issue. For example, Lehman Brothers, after the bankrupt, people who have bought the shares form a powerful groups in website and hold many protest to show their feeling to the HK Government.

Twitter , a social networking blog that draws the attention of the Iran Government as it is a key channel that the people from Iran to communicate with people around the world. They can exchange the information of the country that some people anti-government....since the power of these people becomes stronger, so Twitter is blocked to avoid people to express their feeling by this social netoworking blog.

There are also a way to get a free promotion by social networking blog. "The Best Job in the world" hold by the Queensland, it was a very sucessful campaign as it draws the worldwide attention. People just need to upload a brief introduction to apply this job! Applicant need to get high click rate to win the job! Ben (the winner to be a Island Caretaker) now needs to upload his daily life in Hamilton.

Advantage of social netoworking: it is to promote the business by buliding a image on web, you then will attract a groups of people by commenting their feeback. It may affect tones of people to draw thier attention. If your budget is limited, it is effective and you can try it, people may get a purchase if they are interested about that.

Source: ezone# 545: Economics Post

ezone#567: Economics Post

Social Networking Security

Do you think there are seven deadly sins of social networking security? You should admit that you are currently addicted to social networking. Your drug of choice might be Facebook or Twitter, or maybe Myspace or LinkedIn. Some of you are using all of the above, and using them hard, even IT security practitioners who know better.

Although it's impossible to escape every social networking threat out there, there are steps to reduce the risks. CSO online recently checked in with dozens of IT security professionals (ironically, using more than one social networking platform to do so) to pinpoint seven typical security mistakes people make; and how to avoid them.

1. Over-sharing company activities
This is a sin of pride, when someone gets excited about something their company is working on and simply must tell everyone about it. Maybe you work for a drug company that is on the verge of developing the cure for cancer. By sharing too much about your employer's intellectual property, you threaten to put it out of business by tipping off a competitor who could then find a way to duplicate the effort or find a way to spoil what they can't have by hiring a hacker to penetrate the network or by sneaking a spy into the building. "Sharing this kind of information could lead to targeted attacks on specific technology-producing enterprises," says Souheil Mouhammad, a senior security expert at Altran Technologies. To reign in the urge to share too much, it might be useful to repeat this saying, which has started to appear in the public domain: " Loose Tweets Sink Fleets."

2. Mixing personal with professional
Someone uses a social network for both business and pleasure, most commonly on Facebook, where one's friends include business associates, family members and friends. The problem is that the language and images one share with friends and family may be entirely inappropriate on the professional side. In sharing such things, you also stand a good chance of making the company you represent look bad. "In my view one of the major rules when engaging in social networking is to be aware that your words belong in the public domain," says Paul V. de Souza, chief security engineer at AT&T. "You may be quoted all over the Internet, so make sure to choose your words carefully. Be diplomatic and extremely professional." You have to understand very clearly what the objective of your presence on any given social network is. If it is for work, keep it for work only. If it is for personal/fun use, keep it for personal use only.

3. Engaging in Tweet (or Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace) rage
For the person who has just been laid off or had their professional integrity called into question online, the urge to fire back with a stream of vitriol can be irresistible. Call this a sin of wrath. No one want to get into a flame war, so you should be mindful of what you say and imagine you are at a party where everyone is listening, including your boss, spouse or future employer. Posting any content when angry is about as dangerous as sending flaming emails, if not more so. Think twice about clicking 'submit' because the world may be looking at your angry, immature rant for years.

4. Believing who dies with the most connections wins
For some social networkers, it's all about accumulating as many connections as possible. This may seem harmless enough or, at the worst, just annoying. But when the name of the game is quantity over quality, it's easy to link or "friend" a scam artist, terrorist or identity thief. You should verify the person who wants to get in contact with you, check if the profile of the person is secured. “You'd rather have 50 relevant contacts than 500 unknowns.”

5. Password sloth
Another common sin is one of laziness, in this case picking passwords for your social networks that you're least likely to forget. In many cases, that means using the same password for social network sites that you're using for your online bank account or work machine. If someone with malicious intent figures out the password for one social network, that person can now go and access everything else. You should use the same password on several sites is like trusting the weakest link in a chain to carry the same weight. Every site has vulnerabilities, plan for them to be exploited.

6. Trigger finger (clicking everything, especially on Facebook)
Facebook in particular is notorious as a place where inboxes are stuffed with everything from drink requests to cause requests. For some social networkers, clicking on such requests is as natural as breathing. Unfortunately, the bad guys know this and will send you links that appear to be from legitimate friends. Open the link and you're inviting a piece of malware to infect your machine. It calls "click-happy" and warns. Please do not click unless you're ready to deal with drive-by downloads and zero-day attacks.

7. Endangering yourself and others
The most serious sin, reckless social networking can literally put someone's life in danger. It could be a relative or co-worker. Or it could be yourself. Security experts advise extreme caution when posting birthday information, too much detail on your spouse and children, etc. Otherwise, they could become the target of an identity thief or even a kidnapper. Don't be a twit, don’t divulge every detail about your location and what you're doing.

Source: CSO (US) http://www.cw.com.hk/content/seven-deadly-sins-social-networking-security?page=0%2C0

How does "Web2.0" helps in social networking?

According to Wikipedia’s definition, Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.”

The key aspects of Web 2.0 sites are:
a). Rich and interactive user interfaces.
b). Involving others for active participation through social networking.
c). Improved and continuous upgradation of software of data at a very quick pace.
d). Modifications and remixes by other users to the content to add more value and consequently encouraging data consumption.
e). It’s a global platform linked with Social Media to generate traffic via Social Networking and Social Media’s.

Web2.0 is all about Social networking of Social Media, or to be more precise, it’s all about connecting to each other through Social Media sites. Social Media includes Social Photo Sharing (flickr, picasa, photobucket, etc.), Social Networks (MySpace, Facebook, etc), Social Bookmarking (del.icio.us, diigo, furl) . This is a very important section where we build up networks all round the Global. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Live Journal, TagWorld, Disney XD, Toyota Prius, MSN Groups, Yahoo 360. The term itself describes its features as this section of Social Media explains the sole method of creating and building social relationship out of nodes and ties. Well its pretty obvious how these social networking sites helps in tie-in up of different social network, all round. (MySpace, Facebook, etc),

If you are an online marketer, then the Web2.0 formulae will be much clearer to you than a normal person. When your website visitors will participate and submit content (text, images, pictures, videos), links, participate to discuss and comment, build network around as a end user (both you and your site visitors), then it will enormously help you to generate more online traffic and this whole process will be services and applications of Web2.0. For example, Web2.0 helps to encourage and motivate people, via Social Networking, to make quality contributions to the content on offer. This would not only make proper justification to the same but also add value to it. So it is very important to encourage and motivate others to participate and contribute so that it continually improves the whole service for all of us.

All in all, web2.0 can be advantageous in social networking by its features like interactive users interface, applications, motivation of participations, data consumption encourage, and somethings like that.

Source:
http://blogs.profitimo.com/2007/04/03/web20-all-about-social-networking/