I just came back with a great find on a Cosby sweater for ugly sweater day at work tomorrow. It's technically not holiday themed, but it's very nostalgic and I am hoping that it will be a different take on the cheesy sweater.
However, as I was enjoying my shopping experience tonight, there was something else that I was thinking about based on my regular update from the CNNs and the Fox News on the current state of employment. Zynga is about to go public, and I figured I'd share a related thought. They make great games, and I love playing Words With Friends with my family when I am traveling for work. But is it possible that the increasing availability of mobile games, like Zynga, and social networking, like well not MySpace but that other one, what's it called?, that is partly responsible for the decline in economic productivity?
I ask because one of my job responsibilities is to manage my company's social networking sites. When I look at the time of day when the most activity occurs, it's usually during business hours. Some of the traffic may be driven by hipsters, those with unconventional work hours, the unemployed, etc. But I have to wonder how productive the employed have become when I walk past my security guard's desk in the building and he's mesmerized with Castleville rather than paying attention to the surroundings.
Yes, there are a lot of factors related to fiscal policy and politics that are more impactful to employment trends, but I wonder about how productive companies are as the proportion of businesses continue to increase towards being service-based versus production-based. It's self-defeating and contradictory to advocate limiting the availability of social networking sites at work because big companies, such as mine, rely on this medium as a part of their retention strategy. Somehow, as these innovative strategies to deliver content and engage users become more commonplace, how can shareholders and the famed 1% continue to maximize their ROI from their investments if the people committed to generating their ROI are being ambushed by brand at so many touch points?
I don't mean to overdramatize the matter, mostly because I only expect three people to actually read this. I just wanted to share a thought that has recently lingered with me. (Translation: Anonymous please don't attack me if I have somehow infringed upon your views).
