Cyberslacking reportedly costs companies millions in lost productivity each year, but with a world wide web out there teeming with fun and exciting stuff to watch and listen to, is it any wonder people get lured into chewing up their employers bandwidth for their own personal entertainment?
One of the top causes of cyberslacking in the past few weeks must be thanks to runaway success of one Susan Boyle – an unassuming Scottish woman, who has become a global internet sensation.
Over 100 million – yes, 100 million – people have headed online to watch Boyle’s tremendous performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent.
It is easy to see people’s fascination with Boyle.
Her everyday, small town spinster appearance belies a great and until now, hidden, talent and her rapidly escalating fame is a classic plain gal made good tale.
In fact, her gift may be distracting some of your employees as we speak…
But this fascination with Boyle is not the only reason people are skiving off to watching her perform on YouTube during work hours.
For many, their work internet connection is the only fast and reliable link they have to the internet and such captivating content.
Of course some people are just plainly killing boring work time and others may don’t like heading online during post-work hours, but I think inadequate broadband connectivity at home is driving a lot of people to distraction at work.
The Boyle phenomenon makes it clear why – as the hype grows around her rapid rise to fame, people will naturally want to check out what the fuss is all about, as they don’t want to miss out.
And if their home internet connection is not up to scratch – then the boss’ will do!
Another interesting point about the Boyle example is the sheer level of her popularity. The official YouTube clip is seven minutes long and by today has been viewed over 41 million times. That equates to lot of bandwidth and likely a lot of work hours being chewed up around the globe to hear one person sing a single song!
The Boyle phenomenon also offers a glimpse into the future – YouTube is more popular than ever and is increasingly offering high definition content. It is also increasingly being embraced by TV channels and movie studios to deliver their content to the masses, for example full HD trailers for the latest movies, such as Star Trek, abound on the site.
As the popularity of such bandwidth intensive content starts to explode, so will the need for higher capacity broadband.
And of course we want this delivered to peoples’ homes, to counter, in part at least, cyberslacking.
This highlights once again why fibre to the home will be an essential infrastructure in the very near future – after all, the next Susan Boyle is probably already rehearsing in her country cottage or council flat somewhere out there…
PS: Before you get back to work, check out this slightly quirky, but potentially bandwidth and time consuming site: robertsongsmith.com where you can listen to or record covers of The Cure songs with music composed on the fly by Microsoft Songsmith.