Blogging Horror

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27984057/

Most of us have likely heard about and viewed scenes of the carnage brought about by the terror attacks in Mumbai, India. Some of us may have learned of the attacks or received updates regarding the situation via online networks such as Twitter and Flickr, providing yet another example of how new online networking tools can be used.

The article I have posted discusses how people who were on the ground in Mumbai used micro-blogging site Twitter to ask what happened minutes after the first stage of the attack was underway. Another person on the ground took photos of the carnage and posted them on Flickr to pictorially illustrate what was occurring. Others depended on the sites to remain aware of the status of family members or friends who were in Mumbai when the attacks occurred. All of this occurred in fractions of time and significantly faster than traditional news sites. It begs the question: does the ability for such instant transmittal of information begin to erode the need for traditional news media? In 10 years, will people have a need to still turn on Nightly News at 6:30, or will they instead turn to their Twitter account every few minutes to receive updates on breaking news? Could the news media establish Twitter networks across the world, instead of journalists, to report live updates as they occur with simple blog posts? Many questions, but how these tools were used as these attacks were occurring certainly speaks volumes about where these tools could perhaps be taken.

Another couple of interesting nuggets of information. According to the news article, a Wikipedia article is already created for the attacks and has been updated "thousands of times." Also, a Google map of the attacks was created hours after they began, and has already been viewed over 375,000 times. Pretty remarkable when you consider how recently these attacks occurred and the constantly changing nature of the situation.

Protecting Against the Dangers of Blogging

Unfortunately, I could not post the article I am blogging about because it is password protected. Allow me to provide a brief synopsis. The article appeared in a recent issue of Ignites, which is a mutual fund industry newsletter. Asset management firms are clearly having a tough time right now due to market turmoil, and it's even more imperative for them to be able to adequately protect confidential or company-specific information. These firms have always valued protection of information, whether it be pending job cuts, internal memos, or customer data. The article describes the real difficulty the Internet presents to controlling this important information, and one particular tool is mentioned - blogging.

The article cites some pretty incredible statistics. According to Technorati, there are more than 133 million blogs on the Internet and about 900,000 new posts per day. Additionally, it estimated that 77% of Internet users scan blogs even if they don't write any themselves. This is rather illustrative of the tremendous ability the Internet provides for the control of information to be compromised. To hedge against the dangers of blogging, firms have written policies that specifically prohibit the mentioning of company-specific information on public forums, without prior consent from the company. However, the article cites interviews with labor attorneys who state that employees may be able to cite privacy rules if their firms attempt to discipline them for disseminating company information, especially on platforms outside of company control.

Just an another interesting example of old school issues meeting new school tools. Companies have always been concerned with information getting into the wrong hands, but they have never had to deal with an environment such as the present where the publishing of information was possible with such ease. I suspect their issues will only become more prevalent in the years to come as Web 2.0 tools evolve into Web 3.0 tools and it becomes even easier to disseminate information.