A recent mistake made by a number of US and UK news organization is an interesting, and unfortunate, example of the difficulty in authenticating online information contained in social networks. The incident refers to citations made by several news sources from a fake Facebook profile of Bilawal Bhutto, the son of the assassinated Pakistani politician – Benazir Bhutto. Although, the fake profile along with another one, were taken down, Facebook admits that there isn’t much they can do to prevent people from creating these profiles or including untruthful information.

The interesting part is that the news organizations involved, with their proficiency in investigating and authenticating all types of information, were unable to tell the difference. This begs the question of how many fake profiles and false information exist on these social networks. The question has profound consequences for social networking business models, as marketers attempt to target their messages to specific online groups.