NewsNow says 'let them eat cake'
Anecdotal evidence suggests most people surf the Internet from work. Not surprisingly a whole industry has sprung up aimed at reducing this personal surfing activity, in a bid to make employees more productive.
But new US research suggests that a little bit of what you fancy does you good. Consequently some firms may have to modify their hard line on office surfing.
The National Technology Readiness Survey, conducted by the University of Maryland found that people with web access at home and at work spend an average of 3.7 hours per week surfing sites for personal use at work. But they spend more time, 5.9 hours per week, logging on from home so they can work. Yes, that's right, those who surf at work more than average, work for more hours from home than other staff.
NewsNow advocates the best use policy for surfing at work:
- promote sites that reduce personal surfing rather than ban use
- encourage staff to collaborate and share knowledge of good sites
- use news monitoring sites to keep up to date and learn about the competition
NewsNow Chief Executive, Nick Gilbert says: "When we have promoted NewsNow to companies we often find the most savvy users make use of our site. It's madness to block sites because it creates a Big Brother atmosphere that is bad for morale. I think this research confirms what we believe. The solution is about better use and not banning access. It's also clear that we are moving toward a world where work moves seamlessly between the workplace and the office/desk at home."
NewsNow is also used by many firms to reduce the time it takes to search the Internet for relevant news. Firms subscribe to newsfeeds that they define for their own purposes. In turn the newsfeeds trigger email alerts that ensure key staff are aware of breaking news within minutes of it being published online.
Background Information
NewsNow is Europe's pioneering Internet news monitoring agency and supplier of tailored, aggregated newsfeeds.
NewsNow's customers hail from the world's PR, marketing, communications and web design departments of SME, national and multinational businesses and charitable organisations.
These organisations use NewsNow to gather and monitor news relevant to their company, clients, competitors, market industry and sector. Their news feeds may be delivered to their inbox, to their intranet or extranet or alternatively to NewsNow's secure web archive interface.
NewsNow is one of only a few companies able to offer this kind of online monitoring. Its customers include Exxon, Rolls-Royce, AMD and Sony Computer Entertainment.
NewsNow Key Points
- Searches over 43,000+ sources in real time
- Monitors news in over 146 countries and 20 languages
- Searches most leading international, national and regional newspapers; consumer, trade and technical titles; government press pages; press releases; blogs, webzines, newsletters and leading underground and alternative publications
- Offers sophisticated positional and proximity matching - the ability to specify keywords and phrases and the relationships between them
- No expertise necessary - professional staff take care of your changing needs
- Sources added or removed on request
- 30 day news archive
- No per-article charges
- Fixed monthly fees
- Delivery by email alert, via secure web archive interface or to any intranet or website
NewsNow History
NewsNow was founded in 1997. It began as a news aggregation website (www.NewsNow.co.uk) that fast became the UK's leading news portal. Today the portal features over 3300 topics and attracts 215 million page impressions monthly.
In 1998 NewsNow began delivering tailored news feeds to customers' websites.
In 2001, the addition of a sophisticated custom search engine capable of full-text search enabled NewsNow to deliver high-quality but cost-effective tailored Internet news monitoring solutions to PR, marketing and communications professionals of SME, national and multinational businesses and charitable organisations.