Social Media Usage Growing in Workplaces, Says Multiple Studies
Some recent studies point to a rising trend of social media usage in the workplace.
Research commissioned by Open Text Corporation, a Canadian enterprise content management solution provider, finds that more than half of businesses surveyed in the United Kingdom use social media in the workplace. Further, a whopping 95% believe that social media offers businesses an opportunity to improve both internal and external communication.
The research was done at Open Text’s customer Content Day Event, and surveyed more than 300 IT executives and business leaders.
43% view the direct and personal online interaction with customers and partners as the key benefit of social media. However, security issues were cited by 41% of respondents as a roadblock to long-term social media adoption in the workplace; 20% said that lack of control over content was a concern.
More than a quarter of large organizations expect social media to improve customer service. 93% believe that corporate blogging can help corporate communications.
On social media site usage, more than a quarter of companies surveyed regularly use Twitter for business functions, while LinkedIn, the most popular website, is used by 35%. Also, 40% said they prefer Facebook and LinkedIn above other social media sites for their ease of use.
In slightly related social media business news, SuperLumin Networks recently introduced a Social Media Cache, which is intended to help small businesses handle the bandwidth use of social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.
Social media websites use a redirection model to distribute content, which means that the same Web objects are stored multiple times, often from different servers with different URLs. The SuperLumin Social Media Cache determines whether an object has already been retrieved from another server, and then provides that content from the existing cache inventory.
In its own press release, SuperLumin cited another study by Network Box, which provides security services. For social media usage, “Youtube topped the list, consuming 7.8% of corporate bandwidth, followed closely by Facebook at 4.4%.” The study further found that 5.8% of all enterprise network Web traffic goes to Facebook.
Social media can be a useful tool to connect to customers and clients. But granted, much of social media traffic will probably come from idle, distracted employees scrabbling for sources of entertainment at their desk.
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