Facebook and MySpace a threat to Britain's competitiveness?

Is your daily Facebook/MySpace/Bebo habit a threat to Britain's competitiveness? Indeed, says a new survey of UK workers conducted on behalf of IT security specialists Global Secure Systems and the upcoming IT security conference, Infosec 2008.

There's even a price tag that's being attached to our daily workplace ritual of updating our Facebook status, perusing MySpace for a local gig and sending alerts to our Bebo friends.

The damage?

£6.5 billion per annum, calculated in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage required to keep our friends and contacts informed on our latest mood swings and whereabouts.

The poll was carried out amongst 776 office workers who admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social networking sites whilst at work; that equates to three weeks of work per year lost to social network sites. What's more disconcerting is the impact it's having on the company's network. In polling 20 corporate information security officers (CISO), they estimated that between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of a company's current bandwidth is being taken up by employee usage of social networking sites. They advise companies to come down hard on social networking addicts in the office. These sites should be banned outright, the CISOs say. One FTSE100 CISO reported it was forced to block access to Facebook from the office because it was consuming 30 per cent of the company's bandwidth. Next up are MySpace and eBay, which consume 10 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively, of the company's web-browsing bandwidth.

Of course, many of the biggest brand names such as mobile operator O2 are using social networks for recruitment, marketing and customer outreach. A blanket ban could kill their initiatives, a realisation that is not lost on the CISOs. As David Hobson MD of GSS, advised, saying, “Social networking sites are now integral to the way that many of the latest and youngest recruits into the workforce communicate and work, so for some sectors social networking sites may have a part to play in terms of competitive advantage or used for research or as a marketing tool.  It comes down to a fine balancing act – and mostly a case of introducing a “reasonable use” policy.”

Comments

i agree with this