I hope you’ve enjoyed updating your Facebook status, making connections on LinkedIn, tweeting for the masses and watching YouTube videos from the comfort of your employer’s keyboard, but I think that will change for many in the next year.
I shared my thoughts on this over on SiliconAngle, where I am a contributing writer and decided to cross-post for you. So, have a read and tell me what you think.
I don’t have a list of ten predictions. I don’t even have five. But I do have one and I feel rather strongly about it.
Okay, a great number of people are predicting that social media will be even bigger next year and businesses will continue to latch on and make use of the space. They’ve learned that it is an important strategy and that social media must become a huge part of their overall marketing and PR efforts.
Great.
However, I believe that many employees (state workers, for sure) will find themselves blockedfrom Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and maybe even LinkedIn entirely next year.
I’ve written quite a bit about social media guidelines and even led the charge in developing them for my current company, which supports employee involvement. We want people to get involved and become brand advocates. But that’s us. That may not be the case where you work and you could soon find out the hard way.
For many companies there is nothing to gain but a loss of productivity for allowing this access and they’ve known it for a while. Therefore, I maintain that many will soon pull the plug.
I know of a hotel that just made this change. Their employees can’t even access their personal Gmail or yahoo accounts. This edict was literally passed down from corporate just last week.
They won’t be checking personal email on their employers watch and they sure as heck won’t be chatting it up on Facebook.
Sure, you can still update your status on your BlackBerry or iPhone and not miss a beat. But if your device was issued by your employer, you might want to think twice.
Agree with me or not, I think this is a trend that has legs. Just wait and see.
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December 25, 2009 at 10:02 am
links for 2009-12-25 « burningCat
[...] My one prediction for 2010: Access denied [...]
December 25, 2009 at 10:02 am
links for 2009-12-25 | Don't mind Rick
[...] My one prediction for 2010: Access denied [...]
December 29, 2009 at 9:51 am
Marsh Sutherland
Great prediction. I’m surprised nothing has been done already. This will be a large problem for people who sit in front of a computer all day. Heck, when I first got on Facebook, I spent a good 6 hours a day catching up with all my old high school friends. Soon enough I turned off my Facebook email notifications and got back to work.
There should be segragation of access based upon role in a company. People in Sales and Marketing should be allowed access as social media marketing and outreach provides tremendous increased revenue potential with literally zero cost to the company. Unless administrative staff are spreading the message of how great their company is and creating brand awareness and goodwill, they shouldn’t have access.
These policies will be easy to implement similiar to banning porn on company computers and over company routers and servers.
Angela, how would a company ban social media on their employees’ smart phones? As people migrate from PCs to Mobile platforms, this poses an interesting productivity problem again. This productivity problem on mobile is here today as well.
- Marsh Sutherland
President | Co-Founder
http://SocialGrow.com
@socialgrow | @marshsutherland
December 29, 2009 at 10:09 am
Angela Connor
Hey Marsh! I like the way you’ve broken it down by division and who should have access based on their role within the company. I bet that would create some issues but it would probably work out for the best in many companies. Funny that you should ask about smart phones because that it exactly where people will migrate. They can’t ban it, at least not in a way that I can determine other than making people turn them off which would be impossible to manager. I would love to think this through more with you as we move into 2010. Let’s be in the lookout for case studies and share notes. Maybe even collaborate?? Thanks for taking the time to comment.
January 8, 2010 at 11:44 pm
butt
Pure silliness. If they are blocked from one site, they’ll just go to another site. If I can’t social network, I’ll play solitaire or read CNN or find something else to do on the computer. If you work with computers, you know how to entertain yourself on them too.
January 8, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Sharon
Exactly, butt! The real issue is how do companies control computer usage in general. It’s easy to ban specific sites. But SHOULD companies keep a keystroke log of all worker’s computers so that they can see the total time spend doing non-work related activity (NWRA)?
NWRA is the issue, not facebook.