Well, the apparent cost, anyway:

Staff who use Twitter and other social networking sites while at work are costing UK businesses £1.38bn every year, a report has said.

(Source: BBC News)

The gist of the article is that half of the 1,460 office workers who were questioned in this survey said they used social networking sites for personal use during business hours, and many firms have not issued guidelines on the use of Twitter.

However, one statement is somewhat ambiguous:

On average those people spent 40 minutes per week on these sites.

That's quite a conservative figure really, as the "40 minutes per week" does not stipulate whether all of that time is at work or not. Furthermore, if any of it is during work hours (which I guess some of it has to be, hence the survey), I wonder how much of it is spent during breaks? In a five-day week, 40 minutes per week is just 8 minutes per day. Not much really, but I guess it adds up.

So, if we're really worried about this kind of thing, maybe we should limit some of the following things too:

• Excessive coffee breaks. You don't really need it.
• Excessive lunch breaks. How much time do you need?
• Excessive chatting. Get on with your work!
• Excessive travelling time. It's not the company's fault if your train is late. Bad employee.
• Excessive toilet breaks. Just hold it in.
• Excessive thinking time. Nobody really needs to stop typing, ever. Just keep going. You'll be fine.

Then again, maybe that wouldn't go down too well...

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