The brilliant people at Morse, an IT services company in the UK, released the results of a survey today that claims the time employees spend on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is costing businesses about $2.2 Billion (USD) each year in lost productivity.

This is not the first study to put a number on the cost of social networks to businesses.  Studies like this have prompted many large companies to block social networks or update their employee manuals to forbid their use.  Companies with large HR departments often have to fight to prove reasoning for their existence, and ridiculous studies like this are what they feed on.

“The popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has grown considerably over the last couple of years, however with it has come the temptation to visit such sites during office hours. When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole,” commented Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse.

What the study fails to calculate is the revenue brought about from increased creativity, collaboration, inspiration, innovation and employee morale. When employees are happier they work harder and come up with better ideas.  And employees are happy when they aren’t governed by big brother policies.  The Morse study showed that on average the employees surveyed spent 40 minutes per week using social networks for personal use.  Apparently they are assuming that without social networks those employees would spend that 40 minutes working at 100% productivity.  With or without social networks, are any employees 100% productive?

Social Networks connect employees with the rest of the world – and that’s a good thing! Sometimes it means they get an update from their favorite tech blog, or business journal.  Sometimes it means connecting with a colleague or lost friend who becomes a new vendor or client.  And yes, sometimes it means they get to flip through pictures of their kids at the park.  One of those things helps them stay up to date with industry news, feeds them ideas and may help them work harder.  One helps bring new business to the company, possibly an account worth $2.2 Billion.  The other thing helps them realize there is a world outside their cube and reminds them why they even work in the first place.  How on earth can any of this be a bad thing for employers?

Unfortunately, companies like Morse will never get it.  And as long as employers keep listening to idiots like Philip Wicks, the employer war on social networking is going to get worse before it gets better.

Even today, with all of Twitter’s popularity, people still ask “What’s the point?”  Unfortunately these are the people that just may never get it. 

That’s why whenever I see a good case study for Twitter I can’t help but point it out.  Today the band Paramore is seeing first hand the way Twitter can launch a brand.  This is a prime example of how Twitter is useful, meaningful and an important tool for advertising and marketing…

Yesterday the band Paramore was in a studio in London being interviewed by BBC Radio who recorded the session.  The band put a couple video clips up on YouTube of themselves performing from the interview, and also posted the videos on their own Website’s blog: www.paramorefans.com. They also included a free MP3 of the songs available to download from their site.  Most noteably is their beautiful cover of “Use Somebody” originally sung by Kings of Leon.  It’s an absolutely awesome song. 

Today, not but 24 hours later the term “Use Somebody” is a Trending Topic on Twitter – and when you search for it you see nothing but praise for Paramore and their cover…and the two videos on YouTube are at 25,000 views each and growing by the minute.  Ironically, the orginal song by Kings of Leon hasn’t ever received this much press.

All Paramore did was post a couple videos and a free mp3 and their fans did the rest.  One person tweeted how they liked it, his friends tweeted how they liked it too, and so on…. until so many people tweeted about it that it became a top trend on Twitter – and that’s where I saw it – which is the real success of the story.  Until 20 minutes ago I had never heard of Paramore.  Now I’m in love with their cover of one of my favorite songs and I’ve had the opportunity to download other songs from their Website and have become an instant fan (and here I am blogging about it). 

You really couldn’t ask for a better example of a social media sucess story.

What the Flock?  A new Web browser?  That’s right – the folks at a new company called Flock have developed a new Web browser built on Mozilla (the guys behind the beloved Firefox Web browser).  Flock is a new browser made especially for bloggers and social networking freaks like me (and probably you).

Flock is a powerful Web browser built on the Firefox architecture.  It has everything Firefox has (including extensions), but it also has everything a social network power user could want – including a built in sidebar they call the “People Sidebar” that connects you to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more, a “MediaBar” that lets you subscribe to your friends photos, videos and more and alerts you when they upload new media anywhere on the Web, and probably coolest of all – the Facebook SocialBar stays active at the bottom of the browser, alerting you of new IMs and Facebook updates, even when you visit other sites besides Facebook.

Don’t worry, you can use your Firefox Extensions in Flock!
Admitedly, I first ran into Flock a couple months ago and didn’t even give it a chance.  I’m so dependant on my Firefox extensions that I can’t live without them.  But what I didn’t realize the first time is that any Firefox extension works with Flock.  In fact, to add them to Flock you visit the same Add-ons page on the Mozilla Website and install them the same way as Firefox.  Everything from Shareaholic, Better Gmail, PingFire, PowerTwitter, and more work perfectly for me in Flock just as they do in Firefox.

The list of integrated features goes on and on – from Webmail, to RSS feeds, and more.  If you use Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking sites – or if you’re a blogger – then try Flock and you’ll quickly realize how easier it makes using the Internet.  Bloggers will especially love the way it connects with your blog (whether that be Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc).  In fact, this blog post was created using the Flock Blog Editor.

Go to http://www.flock.com to download Flock and try it out.

Even when Chrome comes out with Extensions its going to be hard to pull me away from Flock – we’ll just have to wait and see.  Try it out and let me know in the comments how you like it.

via Manolith.

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In what appears to be an effort by the Chinese government to avoid online comments and photos about the upcoming 20th anniversary of the “June 4th Incident,” access to most major social networking Web sites, blogs and photo sharing services have been blocked in mainland China.  This includes Twitter, Flickr, Wordpress (Sorry China TAA readers!), Bing, Live, Hotmail, and likely more to come.

Chinese Bloggers and other users living in China are finding ways to post to these services through applications like TweetDeck and proxy servers, but it may only be a matter of time before the Chinese government blocks access to these routes as well.  Most blockages like this in China happen in different stages.

The “June 4th Incident” was a large scale protest and riot in Tiananmen Square, Beijing that lasted about 3 months, ending on June 4th, 1989.  The protests resulted in many deaths and injuries and was finally stopped by Chinese military who charged the square with tanks.  Following the incident the government issued bans on foreign press and strictly controlled coverage of the events – which they are apparently still trying to do with today’s ban of social networks.

God bless America and our right to tweet!

Just tried to update the @TalkAboutAds Twitter background to find it’s not working. We apparently aren’t the only ones: ping.fm/Fs8M7