Facebook Under the Business Magnifier

Facebook has coloured our days almost for the whole time. Everytime we go online either using our desktop, laptop or mobile, most of use will open Facebook. According to Facebook Inc, it has had 1 billion users at the end of 2012, yet it is not allowed in China, where the highest internet users are. At university, every time I have group work, everyone will say, 'Hey, we should create a Facebook group.' Not wikispace, but Facebook group. Everyone expects everyone to have Facebook and we are seemed to have it more than social network.

Either we realise it or not, Facebook is not only used for maintaining relationships by posting to someone's timelines. More than that, Facebook is used as a marketing tool, wiki, blog, events, reminders and so forth. Despite of its popularity, Facebook itself has its own dark side.

By going public since 31 May of 2012, with $38 as the opening, Facebook share price has been declining, until now, $19 per share. Its current price is only half of the beginning price. Why is this happening? Is it probably because of public does not trust Facebook? Probably. In what?

http://blog.compete.com

Facebook does have a lot of security issues. Everyone can create a Facebook account, no formal identity verification when establishing a new account. Even though there is a security setting, the users do not seem to be educated enough not to show their profile for public. A lot of criminal offences came with Facebook as its source when someone can stalk and pretend to be someone else and finally rape and murder cases occur. Even with the security setting as well, there are some deficiencies which may not seem to be significant but affect our security. For example, the photo of you and your friend published in your friend's album. You cannot really prevent them not to show your face to your friend's friends in Facebook. Even though security setting seems to be promising, it is still not a perfect system. Also, the issues of cyberbullying and cyberstalking through Facebook are not new topics. A lot of people have become the victims and they cannot simply get out from that position because when it goes cyber, then everyone sees it and there is no place or time boundaries. It will bombard them anytime and anywhere.

Seeing the implication of the price of the share that keeps declining, it might be possible that public does not trust that Facebook will exist in a future. There is an indication of a short-term trend, such as Friendster which has disappeared by now, was popular in the early 2000. The regulation about social network, including Facebook is still unclear as well. Even though there are actually a lot of offences (physical or non-physical) have occurred in social network, there is still no law regulating the operation. There are still blurs around the issue. There is possibility that Facebook will no more exist in years ahead.

However, with the number of active users that keeps increasing and how people use it everyday, Facebook has become needs for some. The advertising that appears on the website everyday has appeared to a promising income and people might be just too skeptical about this new type of business.

Cloud Computing for Businesses

Cloud computing has been a revolutionary step in IT. Cloud computing is where the data storage is not undertaken in the hard drives of the devices, but somewhere up in the sky. If you are using email attachment, then you are using the cloud computing because you are storing data, not in your drives. The enhanced accesibility of internet also make more people relies on this facility. The implication of cloud computing has been developed for the past years where Microsoft has its SkyDrive and Apple has its iCloud. Some people are using DropBox as well as the substitute of their USB drives. Not only in the personal level, cloud computing affects businesses and society as a whole.

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu

The trend of cloud computing works favourably to the businesses. Imagine that the business is growing from years to years; and is getting big. Then, businesses need more storage to store their data. It will need lots of hard drives to be purchased. With cloud computing, there is unlimited space available for the business to store their data. Businesses do not have to worry about running out of memory.

However, there are still a lot of issues with cloud computing. Even though it seems that cloud computing offers great advantages to the businesses, it comes with security issues. With the nature of business data where it is normally confidential, it will not be great if the data leaks. The problem is with cloud computing, the only security tool that protects the data is only the username and password which nowadays, is very possible to be hacked; different with the physical storage where you can put it in the locked premises. Just imagine when an organisation store all its customers' data online and the data leaks. The implications of data leakage can lead to identity theft even to physical harm. Not only may it be a lot of disputes arisen from it, but also the reputation of the organisation is on the risk. The data back up is also questioned. If businesses store their data online, what will happen if the system crashes and the data is gone.

Saying so, many businesses found that the emergence of cloud computing is very beneficial. Apparently, a lot of companies are waiting for the cloud computing providers to create the program for enterprise level. However, it will be hard to assign the responsibilities. Say if the data leaks, who will be responsible for that, is it the business, or the cloud computing provider. Will the cloud computing provider take that risk, seeing even the US government and CIA sites ever got hacked.

Thus, in spite of the increasing demand for cloud computing, there are still a lot of issues regarding to cloud computing. The cloud computing provider should increase the security of its facility. For example, lately DropBox has doubled its authorisation process before logging in to the website. Law and regulation have to be developed as well as there will be parties that are benefited and disadvantaged when the unfavourable events happen.