7 years ago, I wrote in this column about why LinkedIn was more valuable than Facebook. Before you read any further, let me set the record straight: Facebook is financially bigger than LinkedIn: its valuation currently is almost $478 Billion. LinkedIn got acquired by Microsoft in 2015 for “only” $26B.
My original piece though, focused on “value” as in “the utility each platform brought to its users”. Not just investors.
If you’re an investor, the below might reassure you. If you’re a user or a data practitioner, less so: this past week, Facebook’s utility was put in question as Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO, travelled to Washington DC to answer about the firm’s role in the “Cambridge Analytica” situation.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal (labelled by some “Facegate”) is full of lessons for users, investors, as well as some of the ambitious enterprise CIOs who manage data at scale with complex user needs and ever-evolving data centers.
A Zuck that don’t suck
Two things became clear this past week. For one, Mark Zuckerberg did very well. About $3B worth to be precise: his company’s stock gained about 4% while he was testifying (he owns some 401M shares). It wasn’t exactly the “demise” many predicted.
The other thing that became clear: a lot of things need to happen before we can all rest on best practices for managing data at scale.
If you’re unfamiliar with what happened with #Facegate, here is broadly what happened:
- Last month, the public discovered that, in 2012, a researcher at Cambridge University had gained access to about 300,000 Facebook users by encouraging them to download an application to take a survey.
- This researcher then shared that data with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, which reportedly shared it with others, including Donald Trump’s campaign.
- Back in 2012, Facebook’s policies were looser than today: when people took the survey, not only was their information shared, but so was that of their Facebook friends. In the end, 87M Facebook users were affected.
How can you prevent this from happening to you?
The internet is littered with advice on how to tighten your Facebook settings. I’m not referring to your personal settings here. I’m referring to how you manage your data, the data of your users, employees, partners, suppliers...etc. After all, if Facebook couldn't prevent this with its thousands of engineers, what hope does the average enterprise have?!
Here are a few basic rules to observe:
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- Don’t move data, ever. The reason why data got in the hands of folks that weren’t supposed to have it in the first place is because it was downloaded from Facebook. Ask yourself: how often do your employees export data? “A data extract doesn’t seem to be a big deal” some will say. Well, until it ends up in the wrong hands.
- Do give access to data but, do so through semantic layer technology so access can be governed universally and virtually.
- Don’t hate the cloud: The Facebook story has NOTHING to do with the fact that Facebook data was stored in the cloud. It’s the movement of the data that created the issue. Not its location. Close to 77% of enterprises are embracing the Cloud for Big Data. If you’re not investigating the Cloud for your Data, you might be left behind.
- Don’t underestimate the importance of data architecture: data can become a competitive advantage, IF and only IF, it is supported by a ‘system’ that makes it accessible, usable and actionable. You want an architecture that supports the use of the data in the right ways. Building the ultimate Big Data Architecture is not easy: here is a checklist you can use.
Finally, remember that data is NOTHING until someone uses it. And when they do, you want to know that they are the right people with the right intentions…
