While social networking may have started out as a curious time-waster for consumers, its popularity and ubiquity has now made an essential part—like it or not—of the enterprise computing landscape.
As more and more companies are using their corporate Facebook pages to drum up business, solicit feedback and generally grow their brands and sales, establishing realistic and reasonable guidelines for managing social networking affairs within the company is critical.
eSecurity Planet takes a closer look at the challenges and opportunities facing companies in the social networking community and how management can help foster an atmosphere of openness without exposing itself or its people to legal or ethical missteps.
These days it seems that just about everyone and everything has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and/or blog. Employees that have responsibility for updating or managing the official Starbucks or Walmart Facebook sites or Twitter feeds have probably been carefully instructed on what can and can’t be posted, and readers of the content from these sources are fully aware (or should be!) that they’re consuming information that is controlled, or at least monitored and approved, by Corporate HQ policy.
But what about the policies related to grey areas, like employees that are required to blog or socially network as part of their job? Or independent bloggers and Tweeters that have been given products to review? And how far should corporate policies extend to cover personal blogging and social networking?