John Jaser's Oct. 21 op-ed entitled "Embracing Social Media May Be Dangerous for Your Members" suggests that the rewards of social media are not worth the risk. "Some day there might be," he writes, "but that day has yet to come." He attempted to support his thesis with vague references to the risk of phishing schemes, the reputation risk of loose-lipped employees representing your credit union online and misconstrued survey data.

On the surface these are valid concerns, but Jaser, unfortunately, chose to not dig any deeper. Sincere analysis of the risks and rewards of social media in credit unions would likely have led him to a drastically different conclusion.

Jaser suggests that interest in social media is more "a curiosity" than an opportunity for "positive ROI." He rhetorically asks, "Have any companies actually gained enough new customers to warrant the expense of a full-blown social media effort?" He never quantifies the numerator or denominator of the associated ROI formula and clearly has not read the excellent coverage of credit union social media successes regularly covered in this publication.