Facebook Population Rivaling US Population

CNN reported today that the population of users at Facebook is nearly as large as the U.S. population hitting the 300 million mark. In addition Facebook for the first time turned a profit last quarter. About 70 percent of Facebook's users are outside the U.S.

These two announcements reiterate that social networking is here to stay. This of course presents a challenge for IT administrators who need to decide what to do about traffic from their networks to social networking sites. In the past this was an easy decision, as social networking sites were easily categorized as outside of the realm of the work world. Proxies easily allowed administrators to set up policy to block social networking sites (and some of the inherent risks associated with them like the Koobface virus that appeared on Facebook this year).

As we move towards the end of 2009, more and more companies are finding a place for social networking in the marketing campaigns, employee communications, and other aspects of the work world. It's safe to say social networking will be more integrated in what we do in the workplace as time goes on. Rather than blocking social networking, IT admins are going to have to find ways to allow access to these sites, while making sure they block the associated malware and embedded malware URLs.

An up-to-date proxy running the latest URL database filtering software with the capbility of blocking embedded URLS along with anti-malware and anti-virus scanning for web pages is an absolute must for this emerging validation of the use of social networking at the workplace.