Facebooking is the new MSN

I am addicted to Facebook. It's a networking site where you can post your profile, share photos and keep in touch with friends who are fellow members - similar to MySpace, but in my opinion much more user-friendly. It's amazing - in the last couple of weeks, I've made contact with 15 people I went to school with, some of whom I haven't seen for 10 years! I can't stay off the damn thing - every five seconds I am checking to see if someone has updated their status, or written on someone else's wall.

It got me thinking - in this age of information technology, where the average worker has all day internet access with either few or no restrictions (for those of you who have highly restricted or no access, my heart goes out to you), how many millions of pounds are lost in cyberspace everyday while employees happily waste company time chatting to friends, blogging, reading up-to-the-minute gossip sites and generally messing around? Ok, so I'm sure not everyone uses their internet time to get the latest on Britney's meltdown. Some people must use their time constructively. Perhaps they educate themselves about what is going in the political circles of developing countries. Maybe they actually use the web to find pointers on how to further their careers - they could "come up with ideas" (blatantly stolen from someone else's blog) on how to impress their boss, and thereby secure a coveted promotion. But even so, they are still wasting company time, and therefore company money.

Many companies have restricted access to the more common "now you're taking the piss" sites, such as gmail, msn and youtube (the most FANTASTIC time waster of them all - have you seen the video of the fainting goats?), and the employees there toil away in long dark hours of seclusion, longing for just 5 minutes contact with the infobahn. However, for every company that sensibly removes temptation from its workers' manic mouse clicks, there seem to be 10 that do not treat the irrepressible urges as seriously as they should. I for one, would be lost without internet access. A lot of it has to do with the fact that for the last 4 months, I've had very little or no work to do, so in my defense, it's not really my fault. But even if I did have piles of work, I would still make time for my daily routine of tabloid reading and shooting the breeze with my friends, some of whom are people I have seen that same morning. The information age has made it too easy for us to satisfy our own interests and fulfil our own goals while in the workplace. With the internet's upgrade from a luxury to a necessity, some companies have relinquished control in the name of personal freedom and good faith (these can only be the silly buggers who haven't yet reviewed their lop-sided input vs output data).

What it means, really, is that I am able to muse about random topics like this at my leisure and get a paycheck for my thoughts at the end of the week. That's more than enough fore me. Back to Britney.....