The Bane and Benefits of Social Media

Social media giants Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others may be keeping a lot of CIOs up at night due to security and privacy issues. IT World Canada recently reported that despite these drawbacks, companies should accept social media as an important means to innovation.

The panel of experts included Phil McBride, the head of global IT innovation and project management group at Procter & Gamble. "P&G uses social media in other ways both internally to generate ideas and spread information, and externally to connect to customers," reported by IT World Canada. According to McBride, ""If we don't understand the tools they (customers) use, and don't use them ourselves to bring innovation, then we will never succeed as a consumer products company."

"IT has made security objections to social media a crutch," says IT World Canada. There are myriad strategies for mitigating the risk that can be put in place for a company to embrace social media.