Info 202 Fall 2011

Article - Corporate spies mine for gold on social media

I think it’s fair to say that people sometimes have some individual
privacy concerns when they post information to social sites. However with the
amount and type of information being posted nowadays, companies are beginning
to worry about their own privacy. What type of privacy? The privacy of their business.
The above article is about how the traditionally difficult practice of
gathering information about your competitors has become a simple mouse click
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People tweet, blog and post about a lot of stuff. The work
they do at their company is usually no exception. As people post more
information about their work, competitors gather a potential goldmine of
valuable trade secrets that would have otherwise taken a lot of effort in the
past to collect. Although employees may not be doing this intentionally, the
more information they post about what they do professionally can be used by
other companies as competitive intelligence. The article quotes, Abhilash
Sonwane, a senior vice president at an Indian security firm, who goes on to say
that by following the tweets of certain employees, “you can actually feel
yourself inside that company - what's happening,
what's the morale of the employees, how the business is doing, where top
management go on vacation, did the CEO have a fight with somebody.” This
has grown into such a problem that companies sometimes watch their own
employees on the web for cases of data breach. Although it is getting a little
better because users are protecting their online privacy more, it is still a
significant concern for many companies.

The interesting thing about this article and its relation to
class is how when data gets so large, certain parts can be repurposed for other
uses that it may not have been intended for. I guess it’s another way of
looking at how you can organize the information for your own purposes.  

What is being organized – Peoples tweets, blogs and web posts
about work

Why is it being organized – To build competitive intelligence
about a competitor

How much is it being organized – Any web post from an
employee of a competitor that gives insight into its operations

When is it being organized – All the time it seems

By whom is it being organized – competitor businesses or
corporate investigation companies. Probably with the aid of some software.