12.8 Billion Dollars Lost Because of Social Networks

Besides time loss, social networking from the office is also an open window to hackers and exploiters who take the opportunity to attack the sites of the companies whose employees enjoy socializing over the Internet.

As usual, there are two sides to every story. The one that is condemnable is that by linking in and being active on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, just to name a few, a lot of bandwidth is being used, between 15 and 20 percent, according to a number of companies questioned in a poll, as reported by WebUser.com. There's no love lost between the IT Directors and such networks. On the other hand, the bright side is that the Human Resources people welcome them because that's the way to get together and come to known others better, as Claire Sellick of Infosecurity Europe told the cited source.

Furthermore, "social networking sites are now integral to the way that many of the latest and youngest recruits into the workforce communicate and work, so for some sectors social networking sites may have a part to play in terms of competitive advantage or used for research or as a marketing tool," said David Robson, the managing director of Global Secure Systems.

When most of the bigger companies get together to talk about whether this phenomenon is a good thing, you can't just not take notice. If you are a frequent user, you'd better lay off of them for a while, you don't want others to look at you like you're a security liability. And if you're not, you're most likely to be intrigued by the big sum of money that was mentioned and may give them a try.

12.8 billion dollars are a little shy of the sum of money that Abramovich and Deripaska offered when they wanted to buy Google. Ok, 7.2 billion short of the sum, but nevertheless it's a huge amount. It's almost as much as the market value of Facebook, one of the most promising looking social networks of the moment. Now I think that's some serious slacking!