As my daughter Charlotte would say, "What the heck social media, what the heck"? Being that she is almost 3, she speaks wonderfully for her age, but probably is not questioning the lack of control and order of social media and comparing its environment to that of what the wild west was once known for. If she was, THAT would be impressive, and kind of odd. She's probably just repeating what she hears from me, Charlotte's dad. Why social media? And why the wild west? This week we are dealing with Social Media security and policy. As I'm sure many of you know, we are still in the very early stages of this Social Media phenomenon. We are in the infancy of a new THING that is taking the world by storm. Considering the fact that this is a new playing field, everyone is basically learning how to play the game as they go along. as that happens, mistakes will be made along the way. A certain chaos might break out, much the way it did in the infancy of the west when a certain law and order ceased to exist. It was every man for himself. Every man...not very "PC", but neither was the west! Anyway, check out the video below. It's about 5 years old, but it talks about how social media is like the wild west, and how there is a need for order and government control:
DISCLAIMER: Unbeknownst to me, the one video I really wanted to use, which compares social media to the wild west, does not want to upload into the blog. So I posted a direct link above to Youtube. It's not as pretty or cool as an actual embedded video, but moving on...
The picture to your right is very representative of social media. You just have to look closely. Sacred Valley is representative of Twitter. The Gold Mine is obviously Facebook, but only if you're Mark Zuckerberg. To everyone else it's merely a copper mine. The fertile prairies of Pinterest, and for good measure, the Texas ranch can be Blogs everywhere. Then you have the cowboys which of course are all the users of social media, and the horses (Search Engines) how we navigate the web, and in the middle, you have two dueling guns, representative of chaos and instability; an unstable environment.
Obviously history has showed us that order eventually came to be in the west. How was this done? By implementing laws and policy in order to create a harmonious environment where people can thrive. And the same can be said for social media and implementing security and policy in order to, in some cases, take back, and in other cases create control and a harmonious environment where again, people can....
Social Media Network Security:
When you are using sites like Facebook and Twitter, any information you share can be compromised, and is vulnerable to outside forces that might be looking to take advantage of you in some way. Network Security was implemented into these sites as a way for you to protect your personal information, while still being able to have a user profile, and allow those people who you want to interact with, to be able to interact with you in return. The following three tips can be useful when securing your social identity:
- Be sure to change your settings, in regard to your information, from public access to friends only access. This will allow only your friends to see your information.
- Never accept a friend request from someone you don't know. Even if they are friends with your friend, if you do not know who they are, it is not worth leaving yourself open to risk
- Do not use a "close up" picture of yourself to represent who you are in the social world. Use a picture that will make it hard for someone to copy your image and create a fake identity
Social Media Policy:
Social media policy is a set of standards implemented by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in order to better translate to companies and organizations, what is acceptable social media behavior in the work place. Three examples of those policies are:
- Be respectful. In a work place environment, this includes all of your constituents. According to (Herrin, 2012), "Always be fair and courteous". It also suggests that you will want to avoid posting things that could be harmful to the company such as inappropriate pictures, videos, or informational content.
- Be honest and accurate. If you are an employee representing the voice of the company through social media channels, you must be honest and accurate in everything you say and do. And if you make a mistake, own up to it and correct it quickly. Being able to remain transparent with your customers is what helps to build trust, and strengthening that relationship moving forward.
- Using social media at work. Unless using social media is related to your job function, and you are using it acting as the voice of the company, then that is fine. However, all personal social accounts should not be used during normal work hours.
Based on this week's blog posting, I am able to clearly see the relationship between Social network security and policy, and why it is necessary to incorporate both into a social environment in order to uphold peace and control in an already very voliile environement with many particpants and uncontrollable variables.
To close out this week's posting, here is a funny video from Kimmel. It's a random video, but good for a laugh.
References:
Herrin, Barry ( June, 2012) National Labor Relations Board Post & Template Social Media Policy. Legalhimformation Retrieved from: http://www.legalhimformation.com/articles/pdfs/HIM2012-06.pdf