CHAPTER 18
The Future of Social Media Security
Facebook surpassed Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft in user engagement in 2010 with users spending 12.7 percent of their time on Facebook. Facebook also accounted for 10 percent of all U.S. page views in 2010 according to comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” study.1 This explosive growth in social media usage illustrates the tangible shift into the social engagement era.
1The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, comScore (February 7, 2010), http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/2010_US_Digital_Year_in_Review.
Today, the mobile device that you use to update your social platforms can also communicate with your car, home, vending machines, and a host of other connected devices. The number of Internet-connected devices passed 5 billion in 2010 and are forecast to reach 22 billion by 2020, according to IMS Research.
Social media is integrated into our personal and business lives. These two lives are converging, which will continue to offer opportunities and cause problems. The offline world becomes smaller as the online world becomes more integrated with all aspects of business. Social networking sites have evolved beyond just connecting people: they are global business platforms, now connecting just about all businesses and services. As more information becomes part of this new platform, every bit of user and company information will be made available. This poses a problem that we are already experiencing regarding the privacy of information—or the severe lack of it.
This lack of privacy will keep some people from joining the evolving social platforms, possibly impacting growth and adoption in communities or even cultures. How can privacy and security risks and concerns be overcome? Is there—or will there be—a data protection model that can be put into place to convince the late adopters to move into social networks?
In this chapter, we will identify the major upcoming concerns in social media and what can be anticipated to address the new challenges. We will face issues with the way everything will be interconnected; the erosion of privacy will be an ongoing phenomenon; and the regulatory environment may catch up to help or hinder consumer and corporate protections.