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They have cited concerns about productivity — but some experts defended the site, saying it holds huge potential as a business tool.
Standard Bank is among those that have moved to include it on its list of blocked leisure sites to prevent employees from spending otherwise productive time on non- work-related issues, said bank spokesman Erik Larson.
Absa has done the same, although it will consider access based on individual requests.
A spokesman said: “We don’t see any business need for staff to access the site.”
Facebook users reported that Wesbank and a number of smaller companies are following this trend.
According to the site’s own research, its 31million active users spend an average of 20 minutes a day interacting with their “friends”.
But most newcomers to the phenomenon, which has at least 170000 users on the South African network, said they are addicted and spend far more time than that interacting with their “friends” locally and globally.
Alexa.com, which monitors website traffic, ranks Facebook as the second most visited website in South Africa after Google, and Facebook ranks South Africa in the top 10 user countries.
Alan Levin, chairman of the Internet Society of South Africa, said Facebook forms part of the global knowledge economy, and companies are beginning to recognise and explore the possibilities, beyond the purely social, for their own uses, and the potential it holds for research and development.
Levin said: “There is such a big market — Facebook’s target market is 18 to 35 — and this market is highly desirable. These issues have to be weighed up.”
The Facebook database also holds possibilities for companies through the way the site allows outside users to add their own applications. One such application has just been launched by the local company Fontera. Through an application called Nudgemii, it allows Facebook users to send free SMS messages to their friends all over the world.
Steven Ambrose, who heads the strategy division of technology researchers World Wide Worx, likened Facebook to the village fountain where people gathered to chat.
He said: “It’s taken off like crazy in South Africa.
“It’s in everybody’s face.”
Although its function is still mainly social, companies are making a lot of contacts and getting a lot of information from it.
Ambrose said: “Companies are establishing a presence on Facebook, which makes it quite compelling. It’s all part of the new interaction on the web.”
Regarding productivity, he pointed out that this needed to be compared with other time-consuming work-time activities, like smoke breaks.
Ambrose said the biggest impact is bound to be on the company’s bandwidth but, if users are just chatting, the impact should be minimal, although loading videos and songs could help chew up the limited bandwidth available for home use.
Ambrose advised: “Young and vulnerable people shouldn’t have totally uncontrolled access to the web.”
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