Social media represents a brave new world for many banks. The landscape is changing fast, presenting new opportunities and new risks. In the risk category, new social media avenues can be used to deprecate a bank brand, a lesson the industry needs to take to heart.

Banks need to remain on guard. Case in point: The Google + spoof of Bank of America, which the bank did not notice for a full week. As FOX reports, critics of the bank set up fake pages purporting to be from the company itself. The new tag line: "We took your bailout money and your mortgage rates are going up." How about this one: "Starting tomorrow, all Occupy Wall Street protestors with Bank of America accounts around the country will have their assets seized as part of BofA's new Counter-Financial-Terrorism policy." And this one: "You will sit down and shut up, or we will foreclose on you."

Bank of America clearly dropped the ball by not taking action and allowing the pages to remain visible for so long. But then again, Google + is still so new that bank may not have had time to pay much attention to it. All in all, this is yet another example of the challenges that social media represents. That said, many of the top banks are not sitting back and allowing the movement to engulf them. We're seeing some really interesting deployments at banks and wealth management companies. We recently highlighted some innovative moves at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Most banks now understand that they cannot get too far behind on this, but there will be hiccups along the way.

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