A report from the Network Box shows that 6.8 percent of all the URLs accessed by businesses goes to Facebook and 10 percent of internet bandwidth goes to Youtube. The study analyzed 13 billion URLs accessed by businesses and studied business bandwidths to find results, and found Facebook and Youtube leading other companies like Google and Yahoo.
The report also found that Google attracted 3.4 percent of all URLs, followed by Yahoo!’s image server YIMG at 2.8 percent and Yahoo! itself with 2.4 percent. DoubleClick, the banner ad provider got 1.7 percent of all URL traffic, due to their massive banner network and its presence on a variety of pages. In the traffic category, Facebook used 4.5 percent of all bandwidth, Windows Update used 3.3 percent, Yimg used 2.7 percent and Google used 2.5 percent.
According to the SC Magazine UK, Simon Heron, internet security analyst for Network Box, said: “The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work. There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity.”
This is a report that analyzed businesses strictly, and these results give creedence to the fact that a lot of businesses are clamping down on the use of social networks at the work place. 7 times out of 100, the site visited by an employee at an average business is Facebook. The study didn’t look at time spent, but Facebook is the site on the web with the highest time spent per user, and surely this means that users may be browsing and stalking during extended breaks during their work day. Maybe soon we’ll have lunch breaks and Facebook breaks as part of an employee’s workday. The alternative is to block the service completely but that likely angers employees. What do you think? Leave a comment below.
Cubicle image found via Talkaholics Anonymous.
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One possible solution: Give employees a place for social interaction–an area with pc's set up for this purpose–PC's not connected to the internal network so security is not an issue. Allow them 30 minutes a day PAID to play. Ask them if they wouldn’t mind mentioning the business here and there. SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
Google gives their employees 8 out of 40 hrs per week to work on their own projects. The company benefits from giving people freedom! It is a new day.
Comment by Margo DeGange — April 16, 2010 @ 8:48 am
This is really a surprise? The solution is not control but trust. Businesses need to hire people that can manage their own time appropriately. Also, there SHOULD be a lot of business internet traffic going to Facebook, because that's where the customers are. If a business is going to engage in marketing via social networks their employees – the real employees who do stuff and can make decisions – need to be engaged on those networks, not banned from them.
Comment by Brandon Wright — April 16, 2010 @ 10:17 am
Good stats. Instead of focusing on ways to block social network usage, IT managers should spend their time focusing on new approaches to security with a holistic view in mind. Security is process, not one solution.
Comment by Mark Mathson — April 16, 2010 @ 10:54 am
As more companies start to use facebook and youtube as marketing platforms this is somewhat a false negative perspective – wouldnt you say?
Comment by S. D. — April 16, 2010 @ 12:23 pm
Give me another glass of Kool-Aid! Study doesn’t differentiate direct surfing activity verse integrated buttons and widgets on websites.
The “Connect with your Facebook Account” button even loads content off a Facebook server (and it’s on your every page.) It’s bad math, great marketing as Facebook builds it’s PPC platform.
Best,
Justin
Comment by Justin Hitt — April 16, 2010 @ 9:33 pm
Interesting…but not at all surprising. As a 10-year-old, 100-employee company, our team at INgage Networks has realized tangible business value in Facebook and other apps as well.
When we took the time to measure the value of social media, we actually found that we were saving $10,000 PER EMPLOYEE per year: http://www.ingagenetworks.com/case-studies.
Comment by Courtney Wiley — April 19, 2010 @ 5:59 am
…and productivity in American business has declined as a result. Oh, wait. It hasn't. So, aside from the security issue (which is also more imagined here than proven by any data), this is an imaginary problem, despite some interesting statistics. And it's ironic that the "Leave a comment" box here includes an option to connect with my Facebook account, isn't it?
Comment by DAB — April 19, 2010 @ 6:46 am
It's OK for IT to be concerned about the risks. It's not OK for them to block employee access to social media apps across the board simply out of fear and misunderstanding of those risks.
There's a helpful whitepaper on the subject, called “To Block or Not. Is that the question?”
http://bit.ly/9f8WOT
It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SharePoint, etc.)
It's worth sharing with the IT folks.
Comment by Lisa Valentine — April 19, 2010 @ 6:04 pm
Workplaces should not block employee access to social media apps simply out of fear and misunderstanding of the risks. There's a helpful resource out there for those IT folks. It's a whitepaper called “To Block or Not. Is that the question?”
http://bit.ly/9f8WOT
It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SharePoint, etc.)
Comment by Lisa Valentine — April 21, 2010 @ 7:03 am
I agree that there are significant benefits from the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, but there are also significant downsides. The problem is that it appears that people are either in one camp or another, either "Pro Social Media" or "Against Social Media"
I think there are benefits from the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for getting your company's information out to customers and potential customers who are using the Internet as a reference tool. However, there are significant problems, specifically with Facebook in my experience, when people are using the site to play games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars rather than using it for the social content that can benefit the business.
Margo made a great point in her post when she mentioned Google's policy to allow employees 8 hours a week to "work on their own projects". I am completely for this…but I suspect it needs to be clarified. I personally am for allowing staff time to work on their own project. I would love to see staff do things like create video content and post that to YouTube, or create podcasts. However, I do not think that playing Bejeweled should be considered a "personal project". If it is, then do we allow employees to bring their Xbox360 or PS3 in and spend one day a week playing Modern Warfare 2 online with the company's high-speed access?
Comment by Spencer Hamons — July 6, 2010 @ 11:38 am
Fascinating. The whole idea of social networking to get the people to work and support each other would be quite an advantage if the employees were pushing the message of the company because they loved their work. Wow! What a concept. That's like extra free advertising as friends of friends of friends keep moving the message.
Comment by Debby Bruck — August 25, 2010 @ 9:18 pm
Like so many other articles on this topic, they completely ignore the asian market. Companies like renren.com or baidu.com don't seem to show up in any of this galore, but are just equally big, with equal number of users.
Comment by Poster — September 5, 2011 @ 3:30 am