Over the past year I have written five blogs (July ’09, Sept '09, Oct ’09, Nov ’09 and Dec ’09) on Web 2.0 technologies and the power of this technology in our lives. It is something that cannot be ignored and should not be feared. Did you know that Facebook currently has over 400 million active users—if it were a country it would be the third largest country on the planet! YouTube has 2 billion views per day. Did you know that 24 hours of video are uploaded on to YouTube every minute and there is more content uploaded onto this site in 60 days than all three major U.S. networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) created in over 60 years. YouTube didn’t exist 5 years ago.
I haven’t mentioned the power of Blogs, LinkedIn or Twitter—which has over 106 million users creating 55 million tweets per day and 300,000 new user’s sign up every 24 hours. So, after reading these statistics and having drunk the cool aid, I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and I blog, plus I have helped my employer both adopt and utilize these technologies to better market, brand and educate people about the company. So, imagine my surprise when I saw an article on the MACPA website that refers to a survey taken by Robert Half Technology, which states 38% of 1,400 chief information officers at companies with greater than 100 employees have placed and or are placing stricter rules on social networking sites.
Educating employees about corporate policies, which are reasonable is what is needed, not further restrictions. We are kidding ourselves if we think our employees are not using these technologies during working hours. More and more people are accessing these sites via their iPhone or Blackberry, which isn’t controlled. We have an entire generation of workers, “Generation Y” (1981 to 2000) and their younger cousins, the “Millennials" (2001 to current) that use these technologies to communicate constantly. And I haven't even mentioned the use by "Generation X" (1965 - 1980) and that the fastest growing segment for Facebook is age 45 to 54, Leading Edge Boomers (1946 to 1954) and Trailing Edge Boomers, a.k.a. the Jones generation (1956 - 1964). So, establish reasonable expectations, educate often and drink the Cool Aid.
