Facebook’s coming of age

It’s official: Facebook is a popular communications platform.

Forget about Microsoft’s $240-million investment in the social networking site announced in October of last year. It’s true, the site would be nothing without the tens of millions of visitors wasting time playing Scrabulous or one of the other 38,000 other applications freely available to download.

Then why? Duh you say? Hear me out. The ultimate confirmation came in the form of spam; apparently it’s not just for e-mail anymore. It’s now trickling into my Facebook inbox.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve received oddly-worded messages from people I had forgot were Facebook "friends" of mine.

The first message was typical e-mail spam; it was filled with illegible gobbledygook followed by a link to what was billed as video. I (wisely) passed.

The second message was more troublesome. It too was from a gal/ex-colleague who I rarely speak to, which was the first red flag. But the message, unlike most spam, was relatively well worded and could very well have duped many a time-pressed or unsuspecting Facebook user.

The user could then have subsequently downloaded a virus to his or her computer which as we know are particularly nasty to rid ourselves of without the proper protection.

This may seem like computer security 100 to many but there are many who are still viable targets for bored or out of work developers.

This obviously means malware developers are now targeting the Facebook platform with some degree of success. Facebook earlier this month said it had cleared up the problem. The network, supposedly, had “identified and blocked the ability to link to the malicious websites from anywhere on Facebook.” Clearly, that’s not the case.

Facebook needs to clear up its security problem quickly if it is to turn itself into a money-making machine. This means Facebook must maintain a pristine image if it is to convince advertisers that it’s a viable platform, many are still skeptical of the site’s worthiness. This will prove to be an especially difficult task if the U.S. sinks deeper into what appears to be a recession.

The vendor, Facebook, should once again warns users of the virus that seems to have reappeared -the first warning page appears to have been taken down – perhaps its being updated.

On the computer security front, Facebook users should now treat their inboxes on the social networking site as they would an e-mail inbox. That means caution is the name of the game.

[tags] Facebook, spam, virus, social network [/tags]