The Economist's special report on social networking contains some intriguing information; read Wide Angle's 10 Nuggets from the report or the full report here. Some of the information, such as the fact that 10% account of Twitterers account for 90% of Tweets, has been reported before; other findings are fresher, such as the interesting tidbit that "Since February 2009, people have been spending more time on social-networking sites than on email."
What caught my eye was the report that so much time is being "wasted" analyzing how much time is "wasted" on social networks.
It constantly boggles my mind that this underlying assumption is confirmed: when a "social networking site" is referenced, time spent networking is valueless. Social networking is just that: networking. That is social. Is the value of networking in general being questioned, or is there simply a basic misconception that online media provide no value?
If an employee were to go to a Chamber of Commerce event, no manager would question the business value of nursing those local connections. If a manager were to go to a networking breakfast, I wonder if his time would so readily be recorded as "wasted" because he was investing time in his network. If a CEO spent time volunteering for a local charity, would his time be counted as "wasted"? Why are these activities perceived to be off less value when they happen online?
Is it because the experience can also be fun? What businesses must remember is that channels like Twitter don't lose their networking value because one Tweet in a dozen is a link to a cartoon instead of an article in Forbes. And Facebook doesn't lose its networking value because your old college drinking buddies post pictures of their cute new kids. Remember when we drudged out to networking events and spent hours upon hours nurturing relationships, carefully marking down the names of each contact's significant other, kids' names, and so on in our CMS's? Channels such as Facebook shouldn't be penalized for making that process easy, searchable and transparent.
And a little fun.
What do you think? Why is there such acceptance of the notion that time spent on social networking sites is time wasted?