We think you saw this one coming: Employers are losing a whopping 1.5 workers per 100 in employee productivity to the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook.

This number was uncovered by the clever folk at Nucleus Research, who surveyed 237 randomly  selected office workers. They discovered that some of you spend more time than you probably should poking, adding and making inane comments on friends’ pages.

In fact some of you may be horrified to learn that Nucleus is advising corporations to consider restricting Facebook access at work to reclaim that productivity — all the more important in a global recession and rising unemployment they say.

Among the findings from Nucleus’ interviews with said randomly selected workers:

• Nearly two-thirds of those who have Facebook access visit the site during working hours.
• Those who visit Facebook at work do so for an average of 15 minutes each day.
• 87 percent of those who use Facebook at work couldn’t define a clear business reason for using it.
• Of those who do visit Facebook at work, 6 percent never use it anywhere else, meaning one in every 33 workers built their entire Facebook profile during work hours.
• There are also serious security concerns as IT departments can’t monitor Facebook messages.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Nucleus’s survey took lunch-break time into account (some people might only visit Facebook during break-time). Either way, one imagines if a survey of 237 workers can ever be used as an adequate sample, then there will be a lot of unhappy workers out there in the office world, should all those IT departments take Nucleus’ advice. As Nucleus concludes in its press release:

Companies should evaluate their Facebook policy and the cost to the organization in allowing access to Facebook, as today blocking Facebook may actually result in a 1.5 percent gain in productivity.

In other words blocking Facebook will give you 1.5 more workers for every 100 workers. Nice.

(Photo: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg/Reuters)

Reuters reporters Yinka Adegoke, Alexei Oreskovic and Robert MacMillan are publishing live updates from the Sun Valley gathering. Read their updates below or follow us on Twitter.

Reuters reporters Robert MacMillan, Yinka Adegoke and Alexei Oreskovic will be sending live updates from the Sun Valley gathering. Read their updates below or follow us on Twitter.

Allen & Co’s 27th Sun Valley media and technology conference starts on July 7 and ends on July 12. In the meantime, expect media writers to breathlessly report, blog, tweet, photograph and record the event. Why the fuss? There are literally hundreds of people coming who are known to do nothing else than run the universe when it comes to TV shows, movies, telecoms, the Internet and all sorts of other electronic communications. We have lists of all the people who bankroll them as well, along with a list of other interesting people you will find there.

Here, meanwhile, are the big men and women of media and technology who justify the travel budgets that increasingly hard-up news organizations have to put out for your favorite folks in the press corps to hide behind the hedges and hope for a handout that will break news, move markets and excite our editors. Keep in mind: this list is not a guarantee that these people are showing up; it’s just an invitation list (arranged alphabetically by company). We’ll update it as we learn more. (Our boldface names indicate some general viewpoint that they’re the stars of the stars.)

• James McCann, CEO, 1-800-flowers.com.
• Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard Inc. Also Brian Kelly, co-chairman.
• Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com Inc.
• Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO, AOL
• Michael Ovitz, AMSEF LLC, former uber-talent agent at Creative Artists Agency and former Walt Disney Co executive.
• Gerhard Zeiler, CEO, RTL Group, Bertelsmann AG.
• Bill and Melinda Gates, of the foundation of the same name. Bill, of course, co-founded Microsoft Corp.
• Mark Vadon, executive chairman, Blue Nile Inc.
• James Dolan, president, CEO, Cablevision Systems Corp.
• Leslie Moonves, president, CEO, CBS Corp. Also Neil Ashe, president, CBS Interactive. Also Quincy Smith, CEO, CBS Interactive. (And a former Allen & Co man.)
• Charlie Rose, interviewer and anchor on the Charlie Rose Show
• Anthony Bloom, Cineworld plc
• Richard Parsons, chairman, Citigroup Inc. Former CEO, Time Warner Inc.
• Lowry Mays, chairman, Clear Channel Communications Inc.
• Ralph Roberts, founder, chairman emeritus, Comcast Corp. Also Stephen Burke, president and COO, Comcast Cable.
• Patrick Condo, president, CEO, Convera Corp.
• Jimmy Hayes, CEO, Cox Enterprises Inc.
• Richard Lovett, president, Creative Artists Agency Inc. Also Bryan Lourd, managing partner.
• Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell Inc.
• Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO, Demand Media. He used to work at MySpace’s parent company before News Corp bought it.
• Chase Carey, former DirecTV CEO and Rupert Murdoch’s new No. 2 man at News Corp.
• John Hendricks, founder and chairman, Discovery Communications. Also president and CEO David Zaslav.
• Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO, DreamWorks Animation SKG.
• John Donahoe, president and CEO, eBay Inc.
• Dara Khosrowshahi, president and CEO, Expedia Inc.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (We’ve heard conflicting reports about whether he’ll show. Either way, he’s still on our list.)
• Tom Freston, principal, Firefly3 LLC. Former Viacom executive.
• Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON
• Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Co.
• Jeff Zucker, CEO, NBC Universal. (GE)
• Ronald Meyer, president and COO, Universal Studios. (GE)
• Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google. Also co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
• Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO, Grupo Prisa. Also Ignacio Polanco, chairman.
• Emilio Azcarraga, chairman and president, Grupo Televisa. Also Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vp.
• Christopher Schroeder, CEO, HealthCentral. Also former CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
• Cathleen Black, president, Hearst Magazines.
• R. Todd Bradley, executive vp, personal systems group, Hewlett-Packard Co. Also CEO Mark Hurd.
• Barry Diller, chairman, CEO, IAC/InterActiveCorp. Also chairman, Expedia Inc. Also Victor Kaufman, vice chairman, IAC/InterActiveCorp.
• Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman, Illyria Pty Ltd. Son of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch.
• Craig Barrett, former CEO, chairman, Intel Corp. Also Sean Maloney, executive vp, chief sales and marketing officer.
• Jeffrey Berg, chairman and CEO, International Creative Management. Also president Christopher Silbermann.
• Michael Volpi, formerly of Cisco Systems Inc and Joost.
• Eric Eisner, L+E Pictures. Son of former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner.
• Kevin Reilly, CEO, Lamar Advertising Co.
• Michael Fries, president and CEO, Liberty Global Inc.
• John Malone, chairman, Liberty Media Corp. Also Greg Maffei, president and CEO.
• Reid Hoffman, chairman, president of products, LinkedIn Corp.
• Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, Loopt Inc.
• Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, advanced strategies and policy, Microsoft Corp. Also Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division, and Henry Vigil, senior vp, strategy and partnership.
• Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. Also with him is his second son, James Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp’s Europe and Asia operations. Also Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chairman and CEO for its digital media group. Former president and COO Peter Chernin, whose last day was June 30, is coming along too, in tow with CFO David DeVoe and new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta.
• Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning Inc.
• Jorma Ollila, chairman, Nokia Corp.
• Greg Wyler, founder, O3B Networks Ltd.
• Jeffrey Jordan, president and CEO, OpenTable Inc.
• Jeffery Boyd, president and CEO, priceline.com Inc.
• Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe.
• Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Inc.
• Robert Johnson, founder and chairman, the RLJ Companies.
• Jay Y. Lee, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Kenneth Lowe, chairman, president and CEO. Scripps Networks Interactive.
• Mel Karmazin, CEO, Sirius XM Radio Inc.
• Max Levchin, CEO, Slide Inc.
• Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO, Sony Corp. Also Kazuo Hirai, president of networked products and services group; Robert Wiesenthal, executive vp and CFO, Sony Corporation of America; Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment; Hiroshi Yoshioka, executive deputy president, president of consumer products and devices group; and Nicole Seligman, top lawyer.
• Nick Grouf, CEO, Spot Runner Inc.
• Thomas Glocer, CEO, Thomson Reuters Corp, along with Niall FitzGerald, deputy chairman.
• Michael Eisner, the Tornante Company LLC. Former Walt Disney Co CEO.
• Lars Buttler, CEO, Trion World Network Inc.
• Evan Williams, co-founder and chairman, Twitter Inc.
• David Levin, CEO, United Business Media plc.
• James Berkus, chairman, United Talent Agency.
• Brad Grey, chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures Corp (Viacom).
• Sumner Redstone, chairman, Viacom. Also Philippe Dauman, president and CEO.
• Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO, Vivendi.
• Robert Iger, president and CEO, Walt Disney Co. Also Thomas Staggs, CFO.
• Edgar Bronfman Jr, chairman and CEO, Warner Music Group.
• Donald Graham, chairman, CEO, The Washington Post Co.
• Casey Wasserman, chairman and CEO, Wasserman Media Group LLC.
• Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman, The Weinstein Co.
• Shelby Bonnie, CEO, Whiskey Media LLC.
• Jim Wiatt, William Morris Endeavor.
• Terry Semel, chairman and CEO, Windsor Media. Former Yahoo CEO.
• Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP.
• Anne Mulcahy, chairman, Xerox Corp.
• Jerry Yang, chief Yahoo.
• Mark Pincus, founder, CEO, Zynga Inc.

Nearly every powerful media and technology executive you can think of will be camping out in the idyllic and affluent ski resort town of Sun Valley this week. They have aimed their Gulfstreams squarely at Idaho so they can show up at the 27th edition of Allen & Co’s media and technology conference, which investment banker Herb Allen holds every summer here.

That means nearly every media reporter you can think of will be hovering among the hedgerows and parking lots (and in the bar, naturally), waiting to get a few precious seconds with super-wattage movie executives from DreamWorks’s Jeffrey Katzenberg to Paramount’s Brad Grey, technology heavyweights such as Michael Dell and Bill Gates, media kingpins Philippe Dauman and Rupert Murdoch and fresh-faced startup darlings like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Evan Williams and Ning’s Gina Bianchini.

Reuters, of course, will be among the press crew at the scene. Reporters Yinka Adegoke and Alexei Oreskovic will show up, as will I, and photographer Rick Wilking will be shooting the pictures that at Sun Valley often tell a more eloquent story than any text dispatch can.

We and a bunch of other journalists will be working around the clock (literally) to get these powerful, and often reclusive bigs to tell you what the next stunning media and technology deals will be. We’ll also be asking them how they are keeping their companies in business amid big changes in the ways people inhale their news and entertainment, as well as how they are dealing with the fallout of an economic crisis last year that nearly capsized the financial system.

Also, keep an eye out for the glamorous or the unusual. Sun Valley guests typically show up with their families, and the whole affair is supposed to be casual. That means there’s always the possibility that Murdoch could lose more than his wedding ring. And celebrities, such as investor Vivi Nevo’s wife, actress Zhang Ziyi, are often part of the program.

Check back with us at MediaFile, and remember to read Reuters’s dispatches from Sun Valley. Allen & Co might keep the press outside, but we’ll be working hard to bring you the inside story.

(Photo: Designer Diane von Furstenberg and her husband, IAC/InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller at last year’s conference. They are the kind of media star-power that cruises around Sun Valley, Idaho, for a few days every summer. Reuters/Rick Wilking)

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wore the only tie on display when he welcomed reporters for a reception and tour of his company’s new headquarters, tucked below a hill in a residential area of Palo Alto, not far from the Stanford campus.

The old HP research facility was refurbished for comfort, not for luxury. Facebook tore out a sea of cubicles to reveal wide open spaces for desks and oversized terminals. Nearly everyone sits there, including all company executives.

The result is something like a dream college dorm, with good food available throughout the day in a cafeteria .

“It’s a temporary space. It’s not going to last us forever. It’s an experiment so we can decide what sort of building we want for ourselves going forward,” said Aaron Sittig, who took reporters around the 137,000 square foot building that celebrates the quirky.

Privacy is afforded in meeting rooms, some with names that are mashups of  video games and condiments, like Donkey Kong Chutney and Guitartar Hero.  A leftover crane from HP days decorates one of the snack kitchens. There is an outdoor basketball court, an indoor ping pong table (mixed doubles were going on when reporters walked by) and RipStiks are scattered around for quick transport.

“It’s a rite of passage to learn how to use these to get around,” said Sittig.

Facebook has 700 employees in the building and another 200 in other cities. It will stay in its new home for a few years, until Stanford — which owns the land — wants it back.

Photo: David Lawsky

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Tuesday and while he wouldn't touch TechCrunch's report about financing and valuation, he did opine about a few of Facebook's Web peers:

On the difference between Facebook and MySpace:

I think MySpace defines themselves as more of a media company and a media portal. A way to see the different content that is going on, or a way for a News Corp parent company to spread content through the network. Facebook has always been more focused on helping people build out their identity, helping people maintain their relationships and communicate really efficiently. We have talked about ourselves as a technology company a lot as opposed to a media company.

On the difference between Facebook and Twitter:

We respect Twitter and we think they are a great company. I think Twitter's focus different is markedly different from Facebook's. They are not really at all about a user's identity. They are more about real time communication. People are sharing more and more information...and on a more frequent basis. If you extend that out then there is a good amount of information that is being shared in real time. That's where a service like Twitter comes in, and that's why that's also one piece of what we want to do. If your friend does something important...there is no reason why you don't want that update immediately. Real time is clearly one of the growing trends but i don't think it's the whole picture.

Photo: Reuters

Why do we care about Facebook?

1. People you know and respect use it. That includes you.
2. People you know and respect who scoff at it still know what Facebook is.
3. Facebook, like Google, is popular enough to have become a verb as well as a noun.
4. If the public ever got a crack at buying shares in it, lots of people would get rich.

That’s why mass clucking ensued among the technology press when the word came out Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu is splitting. The Wall Street Journal, so far as we can tell, broke the news. It said:

The departure of the 37-year-old Mr. Yu and the ensuing search for a replacement are likely to renew speculation that Facebook is stepping up plans for a public offering, despite the rocky economy. The company, which has turned down several acquisition offers in the past, has said it is hoping to go public in the next few years.

But some employees and investors, who have poured roughly $455 million into the company, according to VC Experts.com Inc., are eager for Facebook to start planning an offering and have raised questions about whether it has enough money to sustain its growth. Many others have said the company is over-valued, which — in addition to the economic downturn — hampered its efforts to fund an employee-buyback program last year.

One person familiar with the matter said Facebook’s financials are strong and the company expects revenue in 2009 to increase at least 70% from last year. (The New York Times has details on that too.)

The Journal also referred to the now famous $240 million that Microsoft invested in Facebook, giving the service a perceived value of $15 billion (see No. 4 in our list above). The problem is, the WSJ reported, Yu’s job “has grown more difficult, as Facebook has struggled to raise additional money at lower valuations.” If Facebook revenue is supposed to grow 70 percent — a giant leap — history would suggest, and nearly insist, that last year’s revenue total would have been only enough to buy a pack of Smarties.

That would make Yu’s job more difficult indeed. It must be hard to tell all your potential investors that Microsoft was going overboard on that whole $15 billion valuation thing.

Still: Don’t assume that it’s all about Yu. Kara Swisher at her Boomtown blog (like the Journal, also owned by Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp) hints at strained family relations:

In a back-to-the-future move, former Netscape CFO Peter Currie will be the key adviser to Facebook about financial matters, until a new search for a CFO is found, sources said. … But others sources at the company said Yu and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg had had intensifying differences in recent weeks, over a range of issues.

One last note: The NYT story quoted Facebook spokesman (and non-family relation) Larry Yu as saying the site has no immediate plans to go public. Swisher at Boomtown said that Facebook was prepping for an eventual IPO. It sounds like the old, cold comfort behind the idea that if you wait long enough for something to happen, it will.

Keep an eye on:

• An Economist magazine theme park in London? That’s how you know it’s April Fool’s Day. What we want to know is who wrote up the brilliant description that went out in the press release Tuesday night? Oh yeah, they don’t use bylines. Also, check the theme park map. (The Economist)
• The New York Times might have a ton of problems, but its prominence in the media world and its air of rarified intellectualism make beating up on the family that runs the paper irresistible for many people. Mark Bowden at Vanity Fair earlier this week went to town on Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr in a way that would leave most people gasping for breath from the sucker punch. There is limited defense of Sulzberger online this week, but at least there’s Jack Shafer at Slate. He doesn’t quite exculpate the Sulzbergers (I wouldn’t want people saying some of these things about me), but he puts the insults in perspective. (Slate)
• So what if the real estate market is in the tank? Zillow.com, which anxious homeowners use to check to see how much equity they have lost in their homes, is letting people do that by putting its technology on newspaper websites. Is this what they mean by misery loving company? (Editor & Publisher)

(Photo: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg; Reuters)

-- Tom Ilube is chief executive officer of online security firm Garlik. The views expressed are his own. --

Facebook's announcement that they are taking a new approach to their policies on the use of personal data is a quantum leap. By allowing users a greater role in its governance, the world's most popular social network has set the benchmark for all organisations holding an individual's personal information.

It is a brave and important move for Facebook: by allowing users to have a say in the way that their personal information is used and distributed, consumers will finally be allowed to take control of their digital identities.

In the past couple of weeks, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has oscillated from holding on to people's information forever to the position he announced today - giving users the chance to have a say on what happens to this data.

Facebook has learned the hard way that consumers value transparency above everything else. The world watches their every move and this naïve attempt to change their terms and conditions, without fully consulting their users, meant there was an inevitable loss of credibility.

The scale of the backlash against the changes has clearly alarmed Facebook, and with over 8.5 million subscribers in the UK alone, the risks of not taking action were too high. The furore has re-awakened them to their responsibilities to users and also reminded them of their founding principle - to help make the world more open and transparent. And it is in accordance with this, they have published both the Facebook Principles and the Rights & Responsibilities.

Users are already thanking Facebook for their honesty and engagement on this crucial issue, with almost 3,000 publicly welcoming the move on Zuckerberg's blog. Naturally, the devil is in the detail and we must wait to see how this principles play out in practice. However, as the public become more aware of the dangers associated with posting personal information online, they begin to expect organisations to do more to ensure this data is not abused.

With this increasing acceptance of the importance of personal information, people have realised that it is a valuable commodity - not only to themselves, but also to companies and advertisers. As this awareness grows, organisations will not be allowed to take consumers' personal data for granted, and will learn that they can only earn the opportunity to gather it if they are aware of their obligation to use it responsibly.

The Information Commissioner has warned against tardiness with people's information and privacy - be it individuals on social networks or the Government's proposed mega database. In this light, it can only be hoped that Facebook's move will have implications for the wider world.

By democratising the gathering, storage, use and application of information obtained from its users, Facebook has acknowledged the huge responsibilities involved in holding personal data. Zuckerberg has now set the standard for transparent privacy policies within all online organisations and we will be watching avidly to see if others follow suit.

One day after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social networking site would stand by its revised terms of use, he capitulated and said Facebook would return to its old terms while “we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook would work on a “substantial revision.” In the meantime, members can voice their opinions — or as the case has been, give vent to their outrage — through “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” a group created by the networking site.

Here’s a sampling of the 4,229 wall posts so far:

“you guys are a major corp and you think im to believe for a second that you would not share all of our information to make some money for yourselves……PLEASE TELL US ALL ANOTHER LIE!!!!!!!!!!” (James Stull, Montreal, QC)

“The TOS also needs to address the way businesses and professionals are using facebook. If publishers, theatre groups, musicians, art galleries & museums, writers, comedians, artists, etc are setting up groups or fan pages and posting teasers, videos, images and the like, how is that copyrighted intellectual property protected?” (Martha Mihalick, New York)

“Simply, do away with any BS and get down to terms that protect people’s rights and privacy and let’s move forward with a Facebook that everyone can be proud to be a part of. It always amazes me when a small company goes big, how quickly they proprietors can lose there humanity and moral judgement.” (Silvana Scotto Zangri, New York)

Evidently, it’s hard to tout your 175 million members and then ignore their wishes.

Keep an eye on:

• The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the talk is all netbooks and smartphones. (Reuters)
• TV stations go digital, deadlines or not. (New York Times)
• EchoStar’s Charlie Ergen. He may still come back to scuttle the Liberty-Sirius deal. (WSJ)
• Comcast, which reported better-than-expected profit but said it lost subscribers and warned that advertising sales would be under pressure this year as well. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)