Corperate Social Media Concepts

I just stumbled upon this article and found it pretty interesting:

http://information-security-resources.com/2009/11/10/evaluating-corporate-social-media-strategies/

(there's the original article)

According to the article, most corperate companies obviously know about Facebook and LinkedIn, and many of them use these resources to screen potential job canidates. This just goes to show you that you need to be careful about what you post/ how you reflect your image online.

Another interesting concept is that a lot of companies have begun using their HR departments to use Facebook and LinkedIn for potential customer canidate reports. In the articles, Wallace states "Customer-facing functions such as sales, marketing, public relations and customer service are coming to realize that customers want to engage in a dialogue not a monologue and social media is a great facilitator of this two way communication.
An IT manager that becomes an obstacle to adoption of social media based on security concerns is likely to eventually lose the support of key business constituents. "

This is a very interesting notion, and leaves me wondering why it has been so hard for the corperate world to tap into the incredible network system these social media sites have established. It's not to say companies aren't trying, however I believe that we are still a long way from companies fully understanding how these systems work.