Facebook and the office

Posted: August 7th, 2007 | By | Posted in General | Tagged as , , , , ,
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THE calls are growing for facebook to be banned from offices around the country as bandwidth is soaked up by “social networking”. This is one workplace where it would be crazy to do that. Facebook has well over 150 000 users on its South Africa network and I’m guessing that a lot of them would be readers of The Times and our site www.thetimes.co.za . Needless to say, the managers and staff on The Times floor are very active on facebook. If they aren’t, they should be, just to get a feel for the pheonomal stickiness of social networking and the way it is catering for a new desire by Internet users to post their own data, pics, videos and nonsense.

Related posts:

  1. Hey, get out of my Facebook, dude!
  2. Facebook and the office – Part 2
  3. Google’s massive attack on Facebook
  4. Facebook is the new phonebook
  5. MySpace and Facebook offer hyper-targeted “Big Brother” ads

 

Comments

 

Karen Lotter

August 8, 2007 at 8:17 am

Quite scary how the words “ban” and “restrict” are now bulleting back into our democratic society. It is as if all adults have totally lost their ability to think and reason and their will to work. And in order to save the county’s workplaces from disaster a few little tin soldiers are barking our commands and orders and prophesies of doom.

Performance management, targets – there are plenty of ways to manage a workplace and keep it productive and sustainable without imposing banns and restrictions on your employees, which will just make them pissed off and resentful anyway.

 

Caroline Smith

August 8, 2007 at 9:39 am

Thanks Ray – you have congently summarised an argument I am making at work.

PS – congrats on new job!

 

Dave Lucas >> Around The Blogosphere 13 August 07

August 14, 2007 at 2:49 am

Excellent points! I have included your link in my “Around the Blogosphere” series. The shape and cope of social networking services / websites is constantly changing. I wonder what Facebook will be like or if it will even exist one or two years ago.

 

South African

August 17, 2007 at 5:38 am

It may make sense for some industries to be on Facebook, but there are others where employees being on Facebook adds little to productivity.

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  • About

    I am Ray Hartley, the editor of The Times, South Africa, a daily newspaper which was launched in June 2007 under the Sunday Times umbrella. I'm also the editor of Times LIVE.

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