2007 21
Does reading my blog count as work?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
When I see the stats of when is it that people visit my Spanish and English blogs I see that most people read them during work hours while probably, at work. And probably this is not only true of blogs. I would imagine that the stats at Facebook, Myspace, many gaming, music and entertainment sites that are most likely unrelated to work, would also show that most visits come from people who are at work. Now what I wonder is this. Is there going to be a point in which corporate productivity goes down because people are listening to movies, watching movies, flirting, connecting with their friends they have not seen in a long time….at work? If this is true I guess I should also stop blogging…and get back to work!
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No Comments
Julien on November 21, 2007 ·
Yes it does count as work… as much -or even more if the reader is working in a startup- as reading WSJ!
George Tuvell on November 21, 2007 ·
Martin – Very good point! We have about 50 employees at my company and even simple, productivity communication tools like Skype and Google Talk are being exploited. Facebook, match.com, youtube, flickr uploads and other web2.0 services are absolutely taking away from productivity. I do believe that reading the blogosphere and online news as it relates to your business is productive and should be encouraged, but other “personal social” services should be frowned upon during normal biz hours…it’s a 100% distraction. I’m seeing more of this everyday – you hit a very big pain point for me.
cvander on November 21, 2007 ·
You’re marketing yourself when blogging, so of course, it’s work, it’s an investment.
About big corporations, they’ll include in their firewalls filters against facebook, flickr and other websites, the same way that they did it with messenger and porn. But if those corporate leaders find a way to inspire their workers, they’ll have communities of users ready to promote products and services online. It’s just about finding opportunities in what today decrease productivity.
Henrik Ahlen on November 21, 2007 ·
Well, the old notion that work = being 100% at your employers disposal daytime Monday-Friday is only 100 years old but already obsolete.
Still most of us have big difficulties to break free from this and focus instead of delivering value for our employes or our own companies.
It is very clear that our work life is out of synk with ourselves as human beings and modern ways of producing value. Just, for example, the stupid fact that there is really only one model for how you are employed, despite the fact that we have many different phases in life that should influence how we work. For example, we are young, old, with small kids, big kids or without kids. This cause a lot of stress.
So we need to come up with new, more flexible ways of organizing our work throughout our lifetime.
Thomas Wee on November 22, 2007 ·
Martin, I use your blog as a means to keep track of trends and new sites such as dopplr, tumblr among others. Afterall, as a full time technology investor, you would have more time than me to sieve out interesting technology developement 🙂
Elliott on November 22, 2007 ·
This was a problem even before the web thanks to Microsoft including games with every Windows installation. I had them removed before every business computer installation. Right now there are billions of $ of wasted time by employees worldwide. The few that use surfing for picking up trends, researching a la WSJ, etc is miniscule compared to those just wasting time. This coming Monday in the US is called Cyber Monday because of all the employees without broadband access at home, come to work to shop online for post-Thanksgiving, pre-Xmas specials. See http://www.bfads.net.
Also, this non-business surfing leads to more virus & spyware ending up on business computers. Several times I had to have IT consultant [@ $90 /hr] come to resurrect server due to inappropriate surfing or email downloading by employees.
Martín Alejandro Carmona Selva on November 24, 2007 ·
What I can’t get is people -like my Partner- who spends the whole day at Facebook. I mean, he does her job and he does it good -well here in Spain that’s not difficult to achieve- but, what about the others?
I have access to the logs of our firewall -at the company I’m working in-, but I rather don’t look them, I don’t want to depress myself…
Idetrorce on December 15, 2007 ·
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
emmanuel on December 23, 2007 ·
Martin
Read your blog in work hours it is prohibied for the workers beause dont work more.
use linux the best os for the oficce.
http://www.jadetel.tk
shanthi on March 16, 2008 ·
What an interesting way to get people interested in reading! Book trailers are like movie trailers, but for books! You can find them all over the internet now, but here is a site that’s featuring them on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/booktrailers
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nos_hemos_vuelto_locos? on November 21, 2007 ·
Martin, how do you feel about your employees surfing the Net during work hours?
This is not a joke, I really want to know how you feel about it.