Twitter burns £1.38 billion hole in pocket of British economy
The use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are costing UK businesses £1.38 billion a year according to results pooled by a new survey.
The survey questioned 1,460 office workers regarding their use of social networking sites in the workplace, and revealed that more than half of that number admitted to spending up to 40 minutes a week checking such websites.
The Daily Telegraph spoke to Phillip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey. He believed that the £1.38 billion figure was a conservative estimate.
“When someone is asked for their own use they say around 40 minutes a week, but when asked about their colleagues they say they say up to an hour a day. We have used the lower of those figures rather than the high point,” he said. “When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole.”
Also highlighted were fears of sensitive company information being leaked online, with one in three of the workers claiming to have seen private information shared over Twitter and Facebook.
