International Law

Australian workers want access to Facebook:

YOUNGER generation workers see advantages in working environments which allow access to social network websites, a survey has found.

Sixty eight per cent of respondents believe that allowing employees to access social networking sites showed employers trusted them.

Forty eight per cent said the websites kept employees 'fresh' and 40 per cent said that it improved networking between fellow employees, customers and suppliers.

The survey was conducted by law firm Deacons and included 693 workers nationwide aged between 16 and 34.

Read it here (from Australian IT).  However, not everyone is a Facebook fan, such as my QUT colleague Axel Bruns:

As I've said before, I'm no fan of Facebook - in fact, I think that ultimately, it is no more than a poor caricature of what social networking can be and do. Clearly, that's not stopped the site's rapid growth, but as Facebook users themselves have had more time to come to terms with the environment they're now operating in, I think it's in good part responsible for the fact that in some key territories, Facebook usage numbers have now plateaued and even declined.

The main problem here is with the thoughtlessness with which Facebook handles what should be its central asset - the social networks that its users belong to. Social networks are defined in the first place by the term 'friend', but being friends with someone on the site is no more than a binary decision: you either are, or you're not. There's no opportunity to do what we do in our lives outside of Facebook every day - to distinguish between different types and levels of friendship: work colleagues, old school friends, family members, neighbours, ex-lovers, casual acquaintances must all be classified simply as either 'friend' or 'non-friend'. What's the use of that?

Read more here.