Hiring the Internet
Internet Marketing news, resources, articles, and buzz.

Sometimes, so-called “controversies” are overblown by the media. The topic of online privacy on social networks, however, is not one of those cases.

Here’s a personal vignette to share: just this week, I found a friend request from someone I have already friended. It was a curious thing, and then I scrolled down to see that the friend in question posted a warning on his status update feature: “My name and photo have been hijacked to create a FAKE second profile. Please disregard any friend requests from this fake second profile. The REAL profile has this cat icon.”

Next to my friend’s name was a goofy picture of a grouchy-looking cat wearing a carved out… cantaloupe for a helmet?

Anyway, Facebook has been plagued by security breaks ever since its inception, and the account hijacking seems to be the latest battle in the war against spammers. All the controversies about networking sites’ privacy issues have not gone unnoticed by web users.

As seen above, users above the age of 40 are especially bothered about their personal information leaking on the Internet.

Marketers should be careful about how they approach target demographics on networking sites. Friending everyone in sight, for example, is not the most efficient way to get your message across. The best way to get people to respond to you is to offer a feature-rich profile. Widgets, fun or relevant applications, great pictures, videos, links to promotional deals, interesting news and stories are examples of great profile elements. Remember, as with any other kind of marketing, your social networking campaign should offer incentives to engage the audience!