I stumbled on yet another article examining the exploding growth of business promotion on Twitter and Facebook. Computerworld reports the numbers here and they are significant. The report can be found here. Over the past six months, there has been a 250% increase in promotional Twitter use and a 192% increase in promotional Facebook use.

The Computerworld article focuses less on these staggering numbers and more on the security risks posed by such use of the social networking sites while on the job. I think they miss the point. Instead of focusing on the 1.5% decrease in employee productivity measured in the study, the researchers should consider the percentage increase in business development, marketing results, networking and goodwill generation. If you can’t beat ’em, consider joining ’em.