Blocking social sites: good management or pushing people to mobile Web?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Community, Business, Internet, Mobile, Microsoft on
Sure the iPhone is cool, but how many people are buying a smartphone just to get Web access at work?
A lot of our friends who blog using LiveJournal (probably the most community-oriented blogging platform) have commented recently that they’re losing access to LiveJournal and other sites at work - so they’re buying a smartphone so they can carry on accessing them.
I keep wondering how much of the recent jump in smartphone Web browsing is down to phones being almost good enough, networks being almost fast enough and data plans being almost cheap enough - and how much of it is annoyed or paranoid people being forced to put their social network in their pocket to stay in touch during the working day.
Some people are losing access to IM as well, which is stupidly counter-productive because it’s a fantastic work tool. Blocking IM is like not providing a telephone. I’m less certain about work use of social networks and blogs, because although they have some work benefits like networking, it’s often the employee rather than the company that gets the benefits - I might be networking to find a contact for my current project but if I move on, that contact isn’t much use to my company. And while I could see your status on Facebook, I could see it on IM as well, without the potential distractions. And let’s face it, Facebook is 99% distraction
Comment by Celestial Weasel - July 11, 2008 on 3:03 pm
Is there an LJ client yet? I found one for the iPhone that looked like it was one for jailbroken phones.
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