If an employee tweets on Twitter or updates his or her Facebook status at work, should an employer cringe and put up a firewall — or congratulate the person for engaging in acts of social media?

Surprisingly, in Silicon Valley it’s increasingly the latter. But for many organizations the pathway is still unclear, as businesses navigate through the emerging world of going social.

Some companies, such as Safeway Corp., allow only a small number of employees to access social media tools at work. The company has run a successful Facebook site where it offers immediate coupons and discounts for fans.

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Tags: workplace, behavior, productivity, web 2.0, social media

Categories: News

Melbourne, FL (PRWEB) November 10, 2009 -- Social networking in the workplace is a major dilemma for today's businesses. The question is: "Does it help or hurt the organization?"

Although the general issue is always the same, the specific challenges vary. They range from productivity losses, to legal risks, to bandwidth drains and security problems. And even more specifically, these challenges are associated with various types of sites that employees often visit for personal reasons. A few years ago, pornography sites presented the greatest challenge, while today social networking sites seem to be 'number one' with Facebook being the most popular.

A survey conducted by Nucleus Research showed that 77 percent of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours. Of those who use Facebook at work, 87% said they could not define a clear business reason for accessing the site, and some reported using it as much as two hours per day.

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Tags: workplace, behavior, productivity, web 2.0, social media

Categories: News

(From The Wall Street Journal) Because so many people in their teens and early 20s are in this constant whir of socializing—accessible to each other every minute of the day via cellphone, instant messaging and social-networking Web sites—there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home. Chief among them: How much work can "hyper-socializing" students or employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with friends via text-messaging, or are obsessively checking Facebook?

Some argue they can accomplish a great deal: This generation has a gift for multitasking, and because they've integrated technology into their lives, their ability to remain connected to each other will serve them and their employers well. Others contend that these hyper-socializers are serial time-wasters, that the bonds between them are shallow, and that their face-to-face interpersonal skills are poor.

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Tags: generational issues, workplace, gen y, web 2.0, social networking

Categories: News

(From the Washington Post) In the current competitive climate, upgrading your computer aptitude can help secure advancement within a company, better employment elsewhere or re-entry into the workforce after a downsizing.

Some companies are helping. In May, the Edelman public relations firm rolled out an interactive desktop system that trains employees in social networking online -- at their own pace.

"In our industry, it's quite critical today," said Laura Smith, managing director of U.S. human resources at Edelman in the District. Those who advance in hands-on use of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are elevated to another rank in the training system.

Read the entire article.

Tags: technology, skills, social learning, web 2.0

Categories: News

(From the Daily Mail) A number of major firms have banned employees from accessing Twitter, after it emerged that time wasted on social networking websites was costing businesses £1.38billion each year.

A survey published today found that 57 per cent of workers use sites such as Facebook and Twitter during office hours, spending an average of 40 minutes a week posting messages and sending 'tweets'.

The social networking sites have already been banned by many large firms and some City banks.

Tags: uk, social networking, web 2.0

Categories: International | News

By Jill Aitoro at GovExec.com

Leading government into the land of wikis, blogs and social media isn't easy.

Even Sean Dennehy, whose title is evangelist for the intelligence community's widely lauded collaboration Web site Intellipedia, was initially skeptical.

"Cal Andrus spoke to a technology advisory group that I was a part of about wikis and blogs, and we all said, 'This guy is crazy,' " Dennehy recalls. Andrus, who worked in the application services office at the CIA, had won the intelligence community's Galileo Award in 2004 for his white paper on using the Internet to boost information sharing.

Despite a preconceived notion that Web 2.0 technologies had little place in the intelligence community, Dennehy fiddled online with the build-as-you-go encyclopedia, Wikipedia, to see where Andrus was coming from. Sifting through the discussion and history tabs for each entry, he quickly saw similarities in the online community's style of collaboration and the way he and his colleagues at the CIA worked as intelligence analysts. Both approaches involved a lot of dialogue and building on the ideas of others. The big difference, though, was information sharing on the Web required only a few mouse clicks.

"Everyone has a light bulb moment," Dennehy says. "That was mine." He went back to Andrus to ask how the intelligence community could get this sort of wiki up and running. In 2006, Intellipedia officially launched. Three years later, the application boasts about 5,000 contributions and 15,000 edits per day.

But getting there hasn't been easy.

"It's bloody hard, because every inclination in government is to close these types of things down," says Don Burke, officially known as the Intellipedia doyen, who spearheaded the initiative with Dennehy. "People want some magical formula to innovation, but it's not that predictable. They just need to fight like hell."

Caught in the Middle

The Obama campaign built an election platform on Web 2.0 technologies using social media sites, streaming video and blogs to gain support from the country's digitally savvy populace. Building upon that success, President Obama now is driving those initiatives into the federal government. The White House has launched a number of collaborative tools and Web sites to better serve citizens, including Recovery.gov, which tracks how economic stimulus funds are allocated and spent. The president also leveraged the popularity of the video-sharing service YouTube to provide live online access to his speeches.

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Happy Learning!

Tags: web 2.0, technology, federal government, social media sites

Categories: Government

Are social networking sites causing a decline in teen social skills? I think so. A majority of teens spend at least an hour a day on some kind of social networking site.

According to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 87 percent of 12 to 17-year-olds use the Internet daily and more than half of those teens use social networking sites.

Although I use sites such as MySpace and Facebook, I do feel they can cause teens to lose valuable social skills that can be gained by interacting in a more personable way. If you're creating a virtual personality for yourself behind a computer screen, you are not showing people the real you.

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Tags: social media, technology, web 2.0, web 3d

Categories: News

Ran across this blog post from Element K talking about how everyone's talking about social media. Tom Stone, the guy who posted this, salutes ASTD's recognition of the game-changing nature of social media for learning professionals. Hat tip to Tom for linking to Tony Bingham's T+D article, "Learning Gets Social" (and the podcast of it) and also to a press release about ASTD's research report on Web 2.0 technologies.

Tags: social media, social learning, web 2.0, t+d, research, tony bingham, element k

Categories: ASTD in the News

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) September 4, 2009 -- People looking for a faster and more efficient online search experience can now turn to Searchwiki, a new social search engine bridging the gap between searchers and relevant results. Unlike other search engines, in addition to spidering major search engines like Google and MSN, Searchwiki spiders social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to generate additional search results. Searchwiki is also the only search engine that offers redemption points, giving users the opportunity to receive gifts just for searching, commenting and posting reviews.

"Searchwiki technology improves on existing search engines by enabling vertical, community site and Web searches to be initiated from any Web site," says Adam Goldenberg of Searchwiki. "Searchwiki's strength is in its community appeal and dynamic social search cloud. Collaboration between groups of people with similar interests using a Searchwiki will quickly produce much more relevant and tailored results for a common group than a generic search engine would."

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Tags: social media, technology, web 2.0

Categories: News

Tags: social media, workplace, technology, web 2.0, facebook

Categories: News