Tweets and Pokes Cost UK Businesses £1.4 Billion Each Year
The results of a new survey by TNS research found that employees use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, cost UK businesses £1.4 billion each year.
They surveyed 1,460 office workers and found that 57% admitted to spending an average of 40 minutes of working time per week on these sites, for personal use. According to TNS, this equates to just under a full working week being spent each year on social networking sites during working hours.
I have worked in offices for many years and it’s my experience that office workers have always taken time out of their working day for ‘personal use’, whether it’s reading the paper, talking on the phone to friends, chatting to colleagues around the coffee machine or taking a cigarette break – why is using social networks any different?
Interestingly, 76% of those surveyed said that their employers hadn’t issued them with specific guidelines with regards to using Twitter. This is leaving employers open to loss of productivity, damage to brand reputation and security risks.
Rather than banning the use of these sites completely, the most sensible solution is to issue usage guidelines in the same way many organisations do for email. There are examples of social media guidelines freely available on the web and here are a few of the better ones.
- Havard Law School Blogs Terms of Use
- GM Motors Blogging Policies
- IOC Olympic Athletes Blogging
- BBC Staff Editorial Guidelines Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites
- IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines
- Dell’s Online Communication Policy
Posted in: General
Google Adds Twitter Real-Time Search Results
According to this BBC article Twitter has signed deals to put messages sent via the microblogging service into the Microsoft and Google search indexes.
The deals will see messages, or tweets, show up in Bing and Google search results almost as soon as they show up on Twitter.
Microsoft has moved quickly to set up a stand-alone Twitter search page accessible via its Bing site.
Google said its Twitter search service would debut within the next few months.
While some parts of Twitter already show up in some search results they tend to be for individual accounts or messages that have been archived. Both deals will take a feed of all public Twitter streams to make them searchable almost as soon as they are sent.
Read the complete article here.
Posted in: General
Business Ears Show #042: The Rapid Rise Of The Bury Black Pudding Company
Business Ears show #042 was released recently and profiles Debbie Pierce and this business she founded The Bury Black Pudding Company.
Bury and black pudding have been synonymous for over 100 years and Debbie’s company are the only manufacturer currently based in the town.
The business is quickly becoming the leading black pudding brand in the UK, having expanded rapidly from its humble roots of a stall on the World famous Bury Market to now appearing UK wide on the shelves of major supermarket chains like Asda, Tesco and Selfridges.
In the interview Debbie describes how the business got off the ground, outlines what’s driving its growth into supermarkets and shares some of her most valuable business lessons.
You can listen to Debbie’s interview here and to check out previous shows visit www.businessears.co.uk
Posted in: General
One Billion A Day Turn To YouTube
According to this BBC article YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to a new video blog post by the founder of the website.
Chad Hurley’s blog marks the third anniversary of YouTube’s controversial acquisition by Google.
The site was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn – a price it later described as “a premium”.
Earlier this year YouTube was at the centre of a content row over the amount of royalties it paid to musicians for hosting music videos.
Six months later the dispute was resolved when Google agreed to pay UK royalty collecting body PRS for Music an undisclosed lump sum.
Music videos reappeared for British YouTube visitors in September.
Mr Hurley co-founded the website in 2004 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.
They met while employees at online pay service PayPal.
“We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an internet connection can share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so,” Mr Hurley said, reflecting on YouTube’s original aims.
Posted in: General
