Source: WWW.economist.com (Adapted)
– Jan 28th, 2010
To
sceptics all this talk of twittering, yammering and chattering smacks of
another internet bubble in the making. They argue that even a huge social
network such as Facebook will struggle to make money because fickle networkers
will not stay in one place for long, pointing to the example of MySpace, which
was once all the rage but has now become a shadow of its former self. Last year
the site, which is owned by News Corp, installed a new boss and fired 45% of
its staff as part of a plan to revive its fortunes.
Within
companies there is plenty of doubt about the benefits of online social
networking in the office. A survey of 1,400 chief information officers
conducted last year by Robert Half Technology, a recruitment firm, found that
only one-tenth of them gave employees full accesss to such networks during the
day, and that many were blocking Facebook and Twitter altogether. The
executives’ biggest concern was that social networking would lead to social not
working, with employees using the sites to chat with friends instead of doing
their jobs. Some bosses also fretted that the sites would be used to leak
sensitive corporate information.