A survey of 1,460 office workers in Blighty has found that 57 percent use social notworking sites in the office.

The average time spent, or should we say wasted on YouBook and FaceTube, or that Tweety thing is 40 minutes a week. This really doesn't sound like much, however, over a year's time, this amounts to a full working week of productivity lost in silly quizzes, cheeky comments and profile changes.

Financially, the total loss to industry is £1.38 billion so it is no surprise that companies are trying to control internet use and block certain sites and content. However, most employers simply don't have such policies in place, and they have no such policies in place.

In addition to lost productivity, social networking exposes businesses to certain forms of internet crime and offers the potential for security breaches or just plain reputation damage caused by bigmouth employees.

More here.