Some­body must have slipped some­thing into the water at News Lim­ited! After rail­ing (1, 2) against them along­side a few fel­low Aussie social media blog­gers, today they have pub­lished a lead story on the ben­e­fits of using tools like Face­book at work. I’m more than happy to give credit where credit is due.

Today’s story, by Myles Wear­ring, looks at sev­eral Aus­tralian organ­i­sa­tions (and Aus­tralian arms of multi­na­tion­als) that are see­ing ben­e­fits of using Face­book and sim­i­lar tools. He says:

…employ­ers are embrac­ing Face­book as what they see as a valu­able work­place tool, believ­ing it can help build a sense of com­mu­nity amongst employ­ees and help fos­ter bonds with clients.

Exactly! Well said, that man.

The story also dis­cusses the fears over time wast­ing and infor­ma­tion leak­age, both of which are legit­i­mate con­cerns, but it does so in a bal­anced way quot­ing Flight Cen­tre and IBM Aus­tralia as hav­ing adult, rea­son­able poli­cies encour­ag­ing appro­pri­ate usage of Face­book and sim­i­lar tools. This is exactly the right approach and very heart­en­ing to see.

So today, to News Lim­ited and Myles Wear­ring in par­tic­u­lar, thankyou for pub­lish­ing a rea­son­able and bal­anced story on social com­put­ing (and for those of you in my net­work who work at News, can you let Myles know personally?).