I continue to be curious about companies who block social networking sites. The common argument is that these sites reduce productivity as employees lolly-gag on company time checking their personal pages.

I found this post recently on Business Week that referred me to a survey done by Barracuda Networks (who sells tools for email and web security). In the survey, they asked customers (those with their security tools .. and not a random sample of businesses) whether they blocked social networking sites. Of 2400 customers surveyed, 50% said they block access to Facebook or MySpace.

Contrast that with  Serena Software in San Mateo, California. This company now promotes social networking Fridays for staff to keep their pages up to date.  It is also using Facebook as an alternative to a corporate intranet – a place for their staff to collaborate.

Seems to me that many companies are missing out opportunities to use these tools to their advantage.