I will start with a caveat.  I am on Facebook and have over 100 friends.  That is not many by most accounts, I know, although I don't think I have a 100 people I can call friends in the real world.  To date I have only updated my status once or twice as opposed many times in one day as many of my "friends" do.  Although I don't really care if my "friends" changed their cat's kitty litter, there are others out there who find that fact worthy of reading, and even more curiously, worthy of a return comment.

However strange and interesting I find the narcasistic and voyeristic aspects of Facebook, that is not my topic for today.  No, today is for ranting about the impact of Facebook on business productivity.  I know there is significant potential business value from social networking (just ask any software vendor or analyst if you want to hear the value proposition) specifically around brand identity, awareness and sentiment.  I have no doubt that Facebook's impact on branding and marketing will continue to grow (probably exponentially) for years to come.

But what about its impact on our productivity?  What I see is another distraction for millions of workers in a world where they are already overstimulated and overworked.  There is research that says Electronic Breaks actually contribute to higher productivity (in small doses) but do we really need another way to spend our "down-time" at work?  Eventually won't more options for spending down-time motivate us to create more down-time in order to use them?
 
If you look at the usage of Facebook by a typical business person, it seems to me that in most cases Facebook is being used as procrastination tool when we don't feel like doing real work or as a vehicle for daydreaming during meetings and conference calls.  Where is the productivity in that usage model?  I don't see it.

Maybe I'm just having an Andy Rooney moment, maybe Facebook is having a positive impact on business worker productivity and I'm just missing it.  If you think I'm off base let me know, this is one of the few times when I actually want to be wrong.