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Businesses Struggle To Control Social Networking
Lucas123 writes "Businesses in highly regulated industries are trying to strike a balance between workers who use social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate, and trying to satisfy federal requirements to monitor, capture, and audit all forms of electronic communications. As with instant messaging a decade ago, corporations are first blocking all access to the applications, and then considering what tools may be available to control them in the future. A cottage industry is being built around software that can not only control access to social networking websites but also ensure conversations over those websites can be stored for electronic discovery purposes."
Or post on Slashdot.
The company pays people to work, not play farmville.
Then the company is stupid. We have decades' worth of scientific and anecdotal evidence that putting human monkeys in tight little boxes is Not A Good Thing, both for the monkey and the maker of the box.
My employees have two rules to follow: 1. Get the job done. 2. Don't embarrass the company. Compliance with them ensure a wide variety of perks and other 'human' touches which both they and I appreciate. Anything not covered by the two rules is already small potatoes and not worth pulling your hair out. Everybody wins.
Disclaimer: This management method looks like it would be a bitch to scale. Not my fucking problem, thank Cthulu.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The DoD has been struggling with this same issues as well, they recently issued guidance that opened up social media on their networks.
http://socialmedia.defense.gov/index.php/2010/02/26/dod-official-policy-on-newsocial-media/