Should Companies Block Social Media?

Social media is literally taking over business as we know it. It is now hard to have a conversation about anything business related that social media is not indirectly or directly involved in. Being about to utilize social media definitely gives you a competitive advantage in the workplace. This is why it is surprising that there are still companies that are banning social media in the workplace.

I like that this article defends social media in the workplace:

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Why_companies_should_stop_blocking_social_media__9024.aspx

         The figure that the article gave for the companies that have social media sites blocked for their employees is in my opinion, shocking. 54% is way to high for how prominent social media is in today’s society.

According to the article, half of all Americans will own smartphones by the end of the year. What this means for businesses is that even if they choose to block sites like YouTube and Facebook, their employees have unrestricted access to them on their own person phones.

         Overall I think that it is silly for companies to block social media from their employees because they can access it on their phones if they are that persistent on using it. I feel like if you have the kind of people that work for you that you can’t trust to just take breaks for short periods of time to see what is happening on social media, than you do not have the right type of employees working for you. What do you all think? Is social media too distracting for employees to handle or is it a nice option to give them during a break?

#TwitterStudyFindsTrends

A new study done by sociologists at Cornell University found that people all across the world have similar “emotional tones” in their tweets at different parts of the day, week, and even when the seasons change. The researchers based these findings on tweets from 84 different countries around the world. The tweets they studied were from more than two million people. What this study lead researchers to believe is that in general, people from all different parts of the world are feeling the same kind of moods in a somewhat simultaneous manner. 

They think this means is that our moods are shared “underlying biological rhythm”. The article states that this “rhythm” can be in all different environments and cultures. These researches concluded that the pattern on Twitter is that people most noticeably tend to feel happy in the mornings and then right before bedtime. I think this is incredible that in 84 different countries people are all, for the most part, feeling the same way. 

             There is some criticism of the software used to determine this study. One of which is that when people tweet, sometime they are sarcastic and this software is not sophisticated enough to pick up on things like sarcasm. Another criticism (and a very valid one in my opinion) is what someone tweets, it may not necessarily be how they are feeling.  Dan Gilbert who is a Harvard psychologist started in the article, “Tweets may tell us more about what the tweeter thinks the follower wants to hear than about what the tweeter is actually feeling”.

          What is your opinion? Do you think the results should be disregarded because the software cannot pick up on things like sarcasm, or account for things like a misrepresentation of people’s true feelings?

"Facebook Timeline: Zuckerberg's Biggest Gamble Yet"

After hearing bits and pieces about the new Facebook timeline, I decided to read some articles about it. The more interesting article I found was on a site called mashable.com. The writer of the article was Lance Ulanoff, and he was calling the Facebook timeline, "Zuckerberg's Biggest Gamble Yet". I have posted a link to the article below.

http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebook-timeline-zuckerberg’s-biggest-gamble-yet/

Some critics of the timeline and open graph argue that it is just an excuse to organization your information so that marketers can cater to you more. I disagree with this argument, because I feel like if Facebook were that concerned with maximizing their profits, they would simply charge users for having a Facebook profile.

From what I understand, the Facebook timeline will summarize your entire life in a concise way so that your Facebook friends can see as much, or as little as your want of your entire history.

        Obviously, people’s Facebook pages were not created when the user was born, so there will be a lot the user has to fill in about this past. Facebook is saying that they are making these changes in an effort to, “Recover the past”.

After reading this article and being more informed about the new timeline, I feel like it will be a great new addition to Facebook. I do think it will take some getting used to, and it may be confusing at first, but overall I think it will be very informative. In your opinion do you think the timeline concept will be a good addition or bad edition to Facebook?