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01.07.08
Twitter And Productivity
By Neville Hobson
During last summer, there was a spate of mainstream media commentary that social networks like Facebook serve little or no purpose from a business point of view.
Much reporting about companies banning Facebook in the workplace. We were even treated to a variety of opinion that said things like the cost of lost productivity in Australia was about A$5 billion annually, and $130 million a day in the UK.
 Now it's the turn of Twitter to come under some scrutiny with a post by Irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan.
Never mind what are Twitter costs, what's the cost of Twitter? asks Pat in a post that quotes some back-of-the-envelope calculations to arrive at a lost productivity total of 30 million hours per month.
There's a monetary value attached to this:
[...] Our estimates for 2008 suggest @ a minimum lost productivity cost of $20/hour this will represent $300M/month so $900M for first quarter, $600M per month for 2nd quarter so $1.8B, $1.2b per month for 3rd quarter so $3.6b and $2.4b/month for 4th quarter so $7.2b.
In total Twitter should cost economy around $13.5b in 2008!! Isn't that FB value?
But why only highlight a negative point? What about potential positives? Plenty of people see that there are positives.
I left a comment earlier today on Pat's post which said in part:
[...] Even without any credible facts to hand that support any claim to show some business productivity benefit from using Twitter, lumping everything into a ‘lost productivity' bucket makes no sense at all.
While it looks like there might be some tongue in cheek in Pat's post, it does still highlight a valid issue - how do you look at rapidly-emerging communication channels such as Twitter from a business perspective: a waste of everyone's time or with some productivity value?
I use Twitter. A lot. Jaiku too (which is where I most frequently see Pat). I've found that these tools are becoming quite an indispensable means of engaging with some people, a means that complements (and sometimes, replaces) some of the other ways in which I communicate with them, eg, phone, email and IM.
I guess I'm on Twitter and Jaiku on average an hour every day. That's actually quite concise for being active in both networks. But I use TwitKu, a web-based tool that lets me interact with both simultaneously in side-by-side windows on my screen. A terrific time saver.
So let's just run some numbers here:
• 1 hour/day = 7 hours/week = 365 hours/year. Reverse the annual figure back into months = an average of roughly 30.4 hours/month.
• Taking Pat's $ figures, this would work out at a monetary value during the course of 2008 at $608 a month or $7,300.00 for the year.
• That's the minimum value of the time I spend on Twitter and Jaiku. Let's split the value equally at $3,650.00 each per year.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is a UK-based communicator, blogger and podcaster. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: NevilleHobson.com.
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