Social Media Paper Essay

Facebook (www.facebook.com) is the most popular social networking site where individuals and companies can interact and share information. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet (Facebook Company Overview).
While Facebook has become a more popular American past time than baseball, 80% of active monthly users are outside of the United States and Canada. Global and national users are split nearly 50/50 between male and female users. More than half global users are between the ages of 18 and 34.   65% of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school. The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m.and 8:00 p.m. ET (Warren, 2010). According to one report by Nucleus Research, 77% of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours, 87% of which is for personal use (Gaudin, 2009).
According to Facebook.com (2012), there were more than 425 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. This shows that active users use their wireless devices and cell phones to use Facebook virtually wherever they are throughout the day.
Facebook’s Effect on Organizational Behavior
The numbers presented above regarding Facebook users are staggering and therefore, it serves that there is a huge impact on company workers and organizational operations in general. These implications include: 1) Staff productivity, “If every employee in a 50-employee
company spent 30 minutes on social networking every day of a working week, that would total a
cumulative productivity loss of 6,500 hours in one year” (Social networking at work:Thanks, but no thanks?).
2) Threat from internet viruses and malware transmitted through social networking sites which can corrupt files and give external persons outside of the organization access to sensitive information   3) Increased cost for companies...