Ok, so for everyone not in the eMarketing game, Social Media networks and other websites can be extremely distracting and counter-productive. Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are obvious sites up for blocking by companies due to them being high-bandwidth distractions - especially in South Africa where low cost bandwidth is as sought after as copper cabling.
That said; I was shocked recently when a friend who works at Media24 mentioned in passing that the company has blocked their employees’ access to blogs and Flickr as well as the regular blocked sites. A publishing house cutting out blogs seemed particularly odd to me. My Media24 employee friend was a little bummed out by this, but he seemed more accepting than I would have been.
It turns out that Media24’s employees cannot even access their own blogging platform, Blog24 (thanks to Rafiq for the heads up). Is this block company wide? And why do they deem blogs as such a menace?
Granted, blog sites may not be the best source of verifiable information, but research shows that nearly 73% of journalists use blogs when conducting research (a fact I found on this blog). Like it or not, blogs and other consumer generated media make up the majority of the most valuable resources on the Internet.
Is it just me who shudders at the thought of this online de-evolution? Inappropriate websites do need to be administered, but is cutting out blogs the solution to anything?
What is your company's policy?
This is crazy. I can argue both cases for Facebook, and I think limitations have to be placed upon it.
However, by some creative thinking, RSS and duct tape one can get Facebook updates via RSS to employees, a read only very low bandwidth solution. Do same for other news sites so that headlines can be scanned before downloaded.
ITO banning blogs for journos - 2 words: Mum. Bai.
Posted by Derek on 2008/12/08