“In 2005, Employees Will Waste 551,000 Years Reading them (blogs),” says Advertising Age, based on a ‘study’ of U.S. employees.

551-thousand years “wasted.” This is the equivalent of trillions-of-dollars in lost revenue.

“35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis,” writes Bradley Johnson in Advertising Age (see What blogs cost american business). “Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- blog readers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.”

What?! You’re reading my blog, as we speak, at work?! How dare you waste company time and money!! For shame!!

Yes, that hollow squishing sound is resonating from my firmly planted tongue in the side of my cheek. It’s drilling a hole powered by sarcasm and incredulity. Incredulous as I have lost my faith in Ad Age if that’s the type of ‘infotainment’ they’re passing as journalism. No offense Bradley, you’re a fine writer and I’m sure a great guy, but this story is flawed.

In short, this is not a real study – and certainly not scientific – and the findings are flawed. For example, an important point that I strongly question:

"Based on ComScore's tally of blog categories, this suggests just 25% of blog visits directly connect to the job. Employees this year will spend 4.8 billion work hours absorbing wisdom from other blogs that may enlighten visitors but not amuse the boss."

This is a massive assumption that would cost a professional researcher his or her job. Just because 75% of blog categories are not related to jobs doesn't mean it is what people are reading when they are at work – or at play.

It's important to note that I read a lot of blogs and I also write and lead a couple of blogs so I base my comments on a lot of experience.

 Another finding:

"Count all business blog traffic, half of tech and media blogs and
one-fourth of political/news blogs as directly related to work."

Haha – an incredible leap of faith! Even if it was true how does anyone know which half of tech blogs people are actually visiting during the work day? What if it is the half that is work related? Who decides which tech blogs are
work-related or not? What is a work day?

My work day typically begins at 7am and ends at about 11pm with blocks of time dedicated to family, meals, etc. in between. In fact, I began working at 4am this morning, but that’s not typical. My point: there is no typical workday and we don't fully understand with any certainty at all what people are reading during what should be productive work time, and we're only guessing at what blogs are considered work and not work.

I was just researching digital video cameras online. On the surface that could easily be assumed as "non-work". However, I'm looking to buy a new video camera to record our usability tests with client users. That most certainly is work that could easily be assumed as play.

Finally, the Advertising Age survey – like many other surveys conducted by magazines today has a questionable sample size and methodology. I’ve not gotten a firm answer on this, but I believe it was an online survey of subscribers – a self-select survey and only a sample of niche readers, mostly tech heads, not a sample of the total working population of the United States. They invited 5,000 readers to complete the survey. Typical response rates to these invitations average between 1% and 2% -- making the likely response rate to this survey likely in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 respondents (a paltry unrepresentative sample). Therefore the survey findings are completely invalid and only guesswork that are conveyed as being reality.

I asked the writer, Bradley Johnson, Editor-At-Large for Ad Age, about the study and challenged him on the validity. Johnson says “that Advertising Age's analysis, as we noted in the story, is a "best-guess extrapolation done by reviewing blog-related surveys and data. This was not based on an Ad Age survey; it is a best-guess review.”

Of course, that the ‘study’ is not in-fact a study at all but a best-guess is completely glossed-over and hidden in the story.

Don’t believe the hype. Be careful of what you read and don’t feel guilty about reading worthwhile blogs that build your knowledge and intelligence for your job. Use a grain of salt with every blog – including this one (www.IntranetBlog.com) – and always dig deeper to understand the methodology of any study that makes outlandish claims that seem excessive or too good to be true.

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