Two new pieces of research illustrate the startling contradictions taking place in the collaborative workplace - with some individuals apparently taking advantage of social networking technologies and others excluded from Web 2.0 applications.

Research from Global Secure Systems (GSS) and Infosecurity Europe 2008 suggests social networking sites - such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo - are costing UK corporations close to £6.5 billion annually in lost productivity. Which sounds an impossibly large figure, but here's the maths:

The poll was carried out amongst 776 office workers, who admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social networking sites whilst at work, that’s a minimum of 10 hours a month which equates to 3 weeks of every year with two respondents who were so hooked that the spend 3 hours visiting these sites everyday. The end result is potentially billions of pounds in lost productivity maintain GSS, plus the extra demand on bandwidth which is an additional cost to a business in terms of efficiency, maintenance and resources.

Potentially, yes (the bold emphasis in the above quote is important, I think). But, of course, there's also some individuals - there must be some out there (see Further Reading, below) - that are managing to gain important business benefits from social networking sites: contact building, contact managing, contact contacting. Blah, blah, blah.

If the GSS / Infosec survey seems like a slice of media-grabbing hype (and hey, it grabbed my goldfish-like attention), other research from national computing and disability charity AbilityNet highlights how social networking sites are "locking out" disabled visitors.

The research suggests the majority of disabled users can’t even register, let alone participate, in the online communities they wish to join. Kath Moonan, survey author and AbilityNet’s senior accessibility and usability consultant says:

"UK participation in social networking is the highest in Europe with around 80 per cent of the online population now making over 25 million visits a month to sites such as those covered in the review. With a disabled population of some 10 million potential users, these sites are inadvertently imposing a 'technological lock-out’ on those who have most to gain from social networking - arguably the most socially excluded members of the community."

None of the sites reviewed – Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo or Bebo - would allow login without the identification of a CAPTCHA image, a visual verification code used to determine whether the end user is human. Individuals unable to interpret the graphic due to vision impairment, dyslexia or learning difficulties are, therefore, blocked from proceeding.

While some of the sites, such as Yahoo and Facebook, offer an (unusable, says the report) alternative, MySpace’s CAPTCHA image changed every 60 seconds – "an added complication to an already impenetrable process for many disabled users," says the AbilityNet survey. Such an oversight is not only unethical, it is also in contravention of the Disability Discrimination Act (1999). Moonan continues:

"Many of the barriers to accessibility we encountered could be easily remedied and it was shocking how little response we received when we approached the sites for advice on these issues. We would like to ask the operators of these sites to look at some of the key factors governing disabled access, namely: the reduction of the amount of CAPTCHA and the provision of an intelligible audio alternative; user-friendly support for those experiencing access problems and lastly, adherence to what is, after all, the law."

Further reading

• Facebook? LinkedIn? Social networking is rubbish
• Facebook provides a great business opportunity
• Turn email off to stop unhelpful chatter
• $15bn Facebook valuation masks the real deal
• Web 2.0 technologies = five hours of depression

Want to subscribe to this blog? Click here for the options