Boyd noted the rise of business-focused Web 2.0 sites such as Present.ly, LinkedIn and Yammer, observing that with such sites “You’re encouraged to tell everything about yourself…You’re encouraged to tell the world about your company.”
Boyd said the popularity for employees to use such sites meant that businesses were walking into unchartered territory” and pointed out the danger that “a social engineer can quickly ascertain who you work with.”
He added that “Most MySpace profiles are set to ‘private’ – we could learn a lot from these kids.”
Boyd gave several tips for moderating social networking within an organisation and mitigating against hacks.
- Put someone in charge of social networking in the workplace
- Enforce a set of rules with regards to what not to put on sites like Yammer.
- Keep real world friends and associates out of your top friends on social networking sites
- Avoid the ‘life story on LinkedIn’ approach
- Delete old Twitter messages
Commenting on the last point, Boyd said “There are so many random messages, you can, over time, build a complete picture of who this person is.”
If messages are deleted, it’s “a lot harder for someone to mine the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ data” for information.