myboo

THE next time you see an employee hunched intently over the computer, don't imagine he or she is slaving over the office accounts or a report for the next shareholders meeting.Employees are more likely to be whiling away the hours on the social networking site Facebook, a report says.Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. "Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster," he said.The report calculates that if an employee spends an hour each day on Facebook, it costs the company more than $6200 a year. There are about 800,000 workplaces in Australia."There are Facebook groups dedicated to slacking off at work," Dr Cullen said."Some of them are specific to employees of a single company."Facebook - the name is lifted from the term used in American universities for student directories that list names and photographs - has exploded as an online recreation in the past six months. Australians had taken up the trend with a frenzy, said Dr Cullen, and the country now ranked fifth in the world, behind the US, Canada, Britain and Norway.On July 29, 195,000 people had registered for Facebook's Australian network. Ten days later the figure had jumped to 224,000.One anonymous enthusiast, quoted in the SurfControl study, said: "Of course everyone checks Facebook at work, duh! I don't have neither internet nor a TV at home because I like doing more useful things with my time when I'm off work."Another user was even more candid. "I work full time as a tax accountant," she said. "For the past two weeks I'd say I have averaged about 15 minutes of work per day."The site has even replaced internal messaging systems and emails, themselves legendary guzzlers of work time, for communicating within offices.Some employers were restricting employees' internet use or blocking the sites, Dr Cullen said. But others are establishing protocols for using social websites.One fear is that Facebook users can make company systems vulnerable to hackers."It's only a matter of time before a security loophole is discovered and exploited." Dr Cullen said.

broadwayboundsinga

Employers are shocked at the mass amount of employees addicted to facebook and how regularly they visit the site while at work. They believe it is only a matter of time before employers begin to crack down on this problem.i don't know.. i just guessed. ....didn't read all of the article.and this is your homework...you might want to do it your self.

Imaka

Employees of numerous Australian companies are spending many hours on Facebook, rather than actually working. The cost to companies is huge. The number of Facebook users is growing rapidly, causing some companies to restrict employee access to it. It is a tough problem to solve.

RJJ

Your summary needs a topic:Using the Internet to meet people?People not working?Social Networking sites?Pick a topic and get going!

Lee

The internet social site Facebook is costing Australian companies an estimated $5 billion a year. Instead of putting in productive work hours, employees are socializing on Facebook. Also, this illegitimate use of the company internet may be opening a security loophole for hackers to exploit.