As result, Thompson can't envision banning social network applications, even if BEA's harbors concerns around the productivity waste and people posting things to their pages that don't represent the views of the company. "Employees post personal opinion which can be misconstrued as the public position of the company," he says.

To address this issue, social networks now fall under the company's appropriate use policy. "Make it clear that employees cannot speak on behalf of the company (unless that is their job) and remind employees about [what is] sensitive content," he says.

IT executives also acknowledge you can never truly ban social networks. Almost all of the sources contacted for this article were Facebook users themselves, and responded to an editorial inquiry sent via CIO's Facebook Forum. "Users will find ways around [a ban]," says Mark Semkiw, VP of IT at First Heritage Bank . "They can use their mobile phone instead, which wastes even more time."

Younger employees and the generation of teenagers who have come of age with social networks as a daily part of their electronic diets know these workarounds well. AMR's Yarmis says the local high school in his hometown of Weston, Conn. banned social networks entirely, which didn't seem to faze the young users, who used IP address anonymizers to get around the block.

Taking Creative Approaches

Many IT practitioners have taken some creative approaches to dealing with social networking applications. Nuno Borges, director of infrastructure at De La Rue, a security and cash printing company based in the United Kingdom, says the company allows users onto social networking sites for 60 minutes a day. They use an Internet filter from Websense to manage access.

"This way, we allow the usage but control the people that spend all day in Facebook," says Borges, who added that the time limit also applied to other social media sites, such as YouTube.

Semkiw at First Heritage Bank lets the managers decide if their employees should have access to the sites, and IT responds to their wishes accordingly. Other CIOs have taken an even more hands-off approach, pointing employees towards the appropriate usage policy and reminding them of what constitutes good behavior online.

Howie Spielman, CTO of Ecast, which provides touchscreen jukeboxes to bars and other establishments, says he wants to provide his employees with the ability to maintain work-life balance.

"I'd much rather trust employees to get their work done while still enjoying the ability to check personal e-mail, use social network applications, or shop on Amazon when they have a few free minutes, versus engaging our IT staff in trying to prevent them from doing so," he says.