The view from my Computeach desk.......

What do you think?

To all our fellow Tweeps

It really has been a good week and I think we are finally getting the hang of Twitter and how it can help us keep in touch with Computeach students. 

All the team are now signed up and merrily twittering little updates and tips - we have even had some great responses.

Our little community is growing........

What about the darker side of social media.......

......how can IT professionals tackle the cyber attackers and spammers that will no doubt set their sights on this technology?

According to predictions from Kaspersky Lab, in the coming months there will be a surge in the number of spamming linked to new social networking sites such as Google+.

This follows a 'significant increase' in the amount of phishing attacks on Facebook in June this year, putting the social networking site third on the hit list of cyber attacks, behind eBay and PayPal.

"It is nothing new - we have seen it before and I think we see with anything where there is a huge amount of public interest, for example, when there's the release of a new iPhone, it is also massively abused by spam," explained Rik Ferguson, director of security, research and communication at Trend Micro.

Anything where there is unlimited availability and huge public interest is something that will encourage spam.

In years to come [social media] will be the dominant platform, without question.  That is where the communication preferences are moving for users anyway - if you talk to anybody under the age of 25, email is almost certainly going to be their secondary or maybe even their third preferred form of communication.

Criminals follow the behaviour of consumers and if consumers are moving, as they are, to those alternate platforms, that is where the criminals will go.

So how do we tackle this? Well - that is up to you, the IT professionals.

You can see there is plenty of scope to make your name in the IT industry if you can show you have got your head around social media, as as many people use it personally, then you have got every change of making a career out of something you enjoy doing.

So what sites were favoured by businesses?

Well Virgin Media Business has found that Facebook seems to be a favourite for retailers looking at how social networking can boost e-commerce, with 36% using it for business.

Twitter, on the other hand, was only used by 9% of the 500 retailers surveyed - perhaps this is an area for future growth.

What  results have businesses seen since implementing social media into their technology?  IMRG and eDigital research showed that two-thirds of e-commerce businesses and departments have increased their turnover since last year.

But the bottom line about social media is that it is still relatively new - as 70% only started using it in the last three years.

Tim Gibbon, director at Elemental, offered his advice to those who want to show a business that they can lead the social network revolution in their workplace.

"Social media has actually existed for quite some time now and this should be acknowledged, because there were certainly communities and socially driven environments before Facebook, Twitter, You Tube et al."

Mr Gibbon pointed out that social media has changed since it was first around, and so should businesses be prepared to:  they will constantly need to evolve with this new technology.

"Balance and realism in what social environments can achieve is important in that just because businesses may have a presence, may participate, it doesn't mean it will yield the results expected".

"Indeed, quite the opposite can happen: when a business is not prepared with even a little understanding of the changing platforms, brand dilution is possible, " he warned.

Do you agree?

Social Media - time to make your mark?

Social media really is a buzz word for technology at the moment and for anyone interested in an IT career research is key and that is exactly what I have been doing so, I thought (over the next few weeks) I would share some of my findings with you.

Whether it is looking at how social media can help businesses, how cyber crime will be targeting social network sites or how mobile web can be incorporated into this growing industry, there is plenty of opportunity in this fast growing market.

Reagus give a regional picture, showing that almost half (49%) of firms in Manchester are successfully winning new customers through social networking activity, while 55% are using it to engage with existing customers.

Then Prodkauer's International Labor and Employment Group, which looked at companies around the world, announced that over three-quarters are using social networking.

Give it a little thought - do a little research and tell us what sites you think were favoured by businesses.