Facebook Is Bankrupting Our Business! Shut It Down! Shut It Down!

The usual business hue-and-cry about the newest communication technology to come along wasting precious minutes and costing businesses a fortune form all that goldbricking:

[from BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook 'costs businesses dear']

Workers who spend time on sites such as Facebook could be costing firms over £130m a day, a study has calculated.

According to employment law firm Peninsula, 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees "wasting time" on social networking.

The study - based on a survey of 3,500 UK companies - concluded that businesses need to take firm action on the use of social networks at work.

Some firms have already banned employees from accessing Facebook.

Get back to your lathes! You are burning daylight! Work, work, work!

This is the usual pattern. No news here.

When American businesses started to roll out telephones on the desk of every office worker the same nonsense prevailed. After all, the employees would use the phones for personal calls! And gossip! A total waste of money! Grumble, grumble, grumble. We heard the same griping with the rollout of email, then IM, then the Web, and now, social networks.

I also go along with Ethan Kaplan on this:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook ‘costs businesses dear’

if Facebook cost your business “dear,” then you shouldn’t really be in business. If you can’t figure out how to leverage any social network for your own business, and the tendencies of your employees to enjoy them, then time to rethink your strategies.

Comments

[Con von Hoffman]

I don’t remember all this sensational press when we were sitting at our PCs playing solitaire and I *think* people may have spent a few hours a day work doing that.

Just FYI, I’ve been tracking this meme (and the asinine press coverage that feeds it) at my blog for the past month.

http://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/facebook-continues-to-destroy-the-economy/