Levy expects changes from major social media platforms like Twitter, Google, MySpace and Microsoft over the next few months. "[They] will all very concretely and very proactively be addressing their own privacy policy and will be introducing upgrades to their services to make it more transparent and controllable by the end user," he said.

But the ultimate responsibility will continue to lie with the end users, Levy pointed out. "Companies and employees using these tools need to revisit their acceptable use policies to make sure they are reflecting that," he suggested.

Tim Hickernell, lead analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd., advises organizations not to jump the gun as the model may not be good for business. "I would wait to see what actually gets implemented by Facebook and that will likely be a final round of approval by the government. As a business leveraging public social networking, I would not make any strategy changes yet and would continue to follow all existing marketing laws and best practices," he said.

The Facebook privacy issue exposed a huge hole that the government needs to address, according to Hickernell. "If total deletion of a person's presence and historical impact on a social network is indeed deleted in a cascade-like fashion, then any organization's marketing or service integration with social networks could be impacted. Organizations asking for permission to connect to people through these networks need to import what data they need and have been given permission to access, into their customer systems if long-term analysis is required," he said.

"This also then raises some disturbing questions of government meddling in private industry," Hickernell added. "If a social network user opts-in with a marketer as part of a social network, does a cancellation of the user's account with that network constitute a legal 'opt-out' for each and every business connection voluntarily made by the user? To do so in my opinion would conflict with both existing Canadian and EU privacy laws concerning online marketing."