Thursday Buzz: Facebook Jumps Into Threat-Sharing Game

Facebook is already the place where people go to share stuff with their friends. Now, the company may be on the verge of building a safe zone for organizations to do the same.

On Tuesday, the company unveiled ThreatExchange  (opens in a new tab), a website that encourages corporations to share information about security threats they’re seeing in the wild.

“Tools for sharing security information between organizations don’t work if they are inefficient or too complex,” the website states. “That’s why many teams end up trying to solve the same problems that others have already tackled.”

This concept isn’t new. In fact, it’s one that associations have already pushed for in recent years. A number of trade groups focused on specific sectors—like retail, financial, advertising, and energy—have launched their own threat-sharing infrastructures, and many groups are also pushing the federal government to take a lead role on the issue.

It’s just the latest overture that Facebook has made to the business world, where the company has focused heavily in recent months.

Your For-Profit Competition

https://twitter.com/ajlovesya/status/565882455652323330

If you think your foundation’s efforts to improve social good connect closely to your nonprofit status, Colleen Dilenschneider has some bad news for you: You have some competition on that front.

“All organizations—not just nonprofits—are now in the business of promoting ‘social good’ in order to gain support,” she writes in her latest blog post  (opens in a new tab).

With for-profit organizations using messaging strategies long tied to the nonprofit sector, what does that mean for actual nonprofits? For one thing, it means that people may not even associate charitable efforts with nonprofit status anymore. But there’s still an opportunity to stand out, Dilenschneider says, and it starts with being transparent.

“Nonprofits are masters of tugging at heartstrings and making the world a better place,” she writes. “Now—more than ever before—it’s up to all nonprofit organizations to do more than tell. It’s time to show how well we do what we do best.”

Check out her Know Your Own Bone blog  (opens in a new tab) for more details. (ht @ajlovesya  (opens in a new tab))

Other Links of Note

Flipboard flips back. The popular digital reading platform just launched a web version  (opens in a new tab) to complement its popular tablet and mobile apps. Usually it’s the other way around, isn’t it?

You may not run a news operation, but you’re not immune to having a “Brian Williams moment” of your own, SCD Group’s Steve Drake says  (opens in a new tab).

Flying out of the country? If you’re taking an international flight, Lifehacker suggests skipping these three airports  (opens in a new tab).

(iStock/Thinkstock)