It seems an increasing number of businesses are banning or limiting employee access to social media sites like Facebook. The Ontario Government did this a while back. I've even heard rumors that some work places are limiting access to Twitter, which strikes me as particular dumb. Most folks I know use Twitter as a source of information and conversation that would enhance rather than detract from work. For example, Jeremiah Owyang of the terrific Web Strategist blog uses Twitter regularly to reach out for contributions to his blog and his work at Forrester Research. I have certainly used it myself recently to answer work-related questions using my very wise crowd of tweet-friends.
In trying to find information about the potential productivity hit caused by workers using social media, I ran across an article in Techdirt that makes the interesting claim that most studies reporting personal web surfing having negative productivity impacts are sponsored by web filtering companies - in other words, companies in the business of blocking sites like Facebook!
I would LOVE to see some independent research on the impact of accessing social network sites at work. If you know of any such study, please let me know!
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