Do you agree with companies blocking access to social networks?

A mate of mine was complaining the other day that his company had blocked all access to social networks including YouTube.  They kind of missed the mark because all of their employees carry mobiles and many of them had access to YouTube regardless of the block. Whoops!

eMarketer estimate that by 2013, 43% of global mobile internet users (607 million people)  will be accessing their social networks from their mobile phone.

A recent report in the Economist featured a survey of 1,400 IT managers who reported that only one tenth of them gave employees full access to social networks.  It seems their efforts may be somewhat futile.

There is a perception that accessing social networks during work time is simply wasting time. However, a recent report by Pew into the future of the internet found that use of the internet improved reading, writing and building of knowledge.

With so much knowledge being shared through social networks, wikis, blogs and forums encourage people to work together and allow employees at every different level within a company to be sharing ideas.

Could blocking social media access also block the sharing of great ideas?

And in blocking sharing, are companies destined to continue to operate in isolated silos where they never hear fresh ideas?

Has social media access been blocked in your company? If so what impact has it had?

If you are lucky enough to still have total access to social media, what are the positive outcomes and are there any negative impacts on the company’s culture and performance?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Social Media and tagged with Facebook at work, Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.