If you work for a large bank, chances are you’re banned from using Facebook during office hours. This fact was confirmed for me at Ross Dawson’s excellent Enterprise 2.0 forum held last month in Sydney.
At the forum I led a roundtable discussion on enterprise 2.0 for financial services. You can read my summary at the forum blog. Research from Nielsen Online backs-up the anecdotal evidence. Its latest social networking report reveals more than one third (36 per cent) of social networking users experience restrictions on access at work.
But are banks right to block Facebook? Many executives view social networking sites like Facebook as a time-waster, but the reality is they are being embraced by web users the world over, with local growth now outstripping that of markets where social networking is more mature.
Nearly half (44 per cent of Australians and 49 per cent of New Zealanders) of our region’s Internet users have actively updated their own online profile within the last 12 months. And growth is likely to continue with as many as half of non-current users indicating they plan to sign up to a social networking site within the next 12 months.
Aside from the concerns about Facebook being a time-waster, there’s also the often touted complaint that social networking sites are a security risk. Some say the sites are a breeding ground for identity theft. In reality users choose how much information to display about themselves and who can view it, and the last time I checked it was good old fashioned mail theft that was the real driver of identity fraud in this country.
Despite the negative hype, some companies in the financial sector see social networking sites as an opportunity, not a threat. Many are using sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to assist with recruitment and retention of staff. LaVolta’s Sally Mills has an article on this in the upcoming issue of Retail Banking Review.
PayPal has started building useful applications for users of Facebook, and US online investment club Cake Financial is using Facebook to allow users to share information on their investment portfolios and trading activity with people they trust.
Security vendor F-secure has also joined the large number of companies now modifying their existing product offering to appeal to Facebook users. The group’s “Care for Your PC” application allows Facebook users to conduct checks of just how secure their PC is.
Perhaps corporates are banning Facebook in the hope that staff will somehow build a wall between their work and personal lives, confining what they do at work to work and what they do after hours to Facebook. I think this is unrealistic. Networking is part of working life and something successful employees must master to bring diversity to their work.
Isn’t it time Australian banks acknowledged social networking as an opportunity?
What do you think ?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
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1 comments:
I think this is a "double edge" sword. One one hand social networking is here to stay, we just began a series of articles (http://bankwide.com/index.php/Articles.html)
to the impact of social networking and social finance to the banking industry; however, some people will abuse the system.
During one month a "less than productive" teller used the most bandwidth and web page views by a staggering 10,000 pages all on facebook, this behavior eats up bandwidth and causes a loss in productivity.
The solution that I implemented is that if a user has a legitimate use for a site, then we allow them access. Our private bankers use Facebook to network, etc. So we allow them access, we don't allow someone to use it just to keep up with friends and gossip.
I think the best solution is to maintain control over where users can visit based on the users legitimate need to access social network sites.
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