Sunday, February 06, 2011

New war- New tools

O Lord, Cry me a river, for we seem to learn nothing out of our follies and I am making no distinction between Private and Public behavior. Who is to blame for this exhibitionism? What is driving men (not in Gender terms) to this increasing wearing of emotions on sleeve. What happened to the good old adage, "what goes around the house, stays in the house" ? Now , i see many of you shaking your head in denial and sheer absurdity of writing this kind of article.

We are all leaving digital footprints everywhere we go, You are not Google's customer. You are Google's product, which they sell to their [advertising] customers. I cant help but expressing continued concern at Google's use of privileged personal data from users of Gmail, its e-mail service, as the foundation of Google's new social networking site, Buzz. Staff postings to social networking sites pose a new data leakage risk. This kind of risk poses a huge threat to companies involved with deals or projects that are at a sensitive stage . people constantly updating their location on Linked-in or facebook present a corporate risk in case you are working in mergers and acquisitions of new product development or even marketing. 3 trips down to a particular market in a space of 1 month can alarm any competitor of impending product launch by the Brand director/ Category head.

Mobile phones that store personal contacts, music and photographs also often contain highly sensitive work data. Devices such as BlackBerry smartphones, originally intended for business use, are now being increasingly marketed to consumers, while the Apple iPhone, essentially a consumer device, is being targeted at professionals. It is feared that new technologies such as cloud computing, where an organisation's data and software are stored on remote servers controlled by a third party, also pose a huge potential security challenge.

Apart from the obvious risks for the corporates , there are enormous risks in Private space too. Facebook updates are nothing but a cry for attention. It looks like a desperate plea to get noticed. We are simply trivializing the value of old fashioned relationships which were built on time spent , standing by someone through thick and thin. Sharing, caring and lot of times showing patience. This Facebook behavior is teaching new meanings in relationships. We 'Friend' and 'Unfriend' so easily. People are just taking this behavior to family life.

Would you rather spend hours on-end tending to a fictional farm or gangstering around Facebook than being physically intimate with a spouse? While on a date are you more focused on this great Tweet you're think of than the pleasant conversation? Do you consider things that happen IRL to be "quaint"? If you answered Yes, Maybe or even No to any of these questions, you may be a social media addict. Social media addiction is a real thing and no laughing matter. It affects, probably, thousands of people. And it may be wrecking your relationships and the ability to connect with people while logged off of the world wide web.The old fashioned way of taking and thrashing out differences is almost non-existent.


Alas, we need new tools in this new warfare agains the onslaught of social media and merging of both spaces.

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