Your employees really are on Facebook at work, trust me. And they’re on more than 400 other social networking sites as well. Ok, if you’re one of the companies that blocks the Facebook.com domain you may be saving your company a bit in terms of employee productivity, but from a security standpoint it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

During fourth quarter 2008, FaceTime collected live traffic data from more than 80 mid to large commercially deployed networks worldwide, representing the daily Web-based activities of more than 100,000 corporate workers. In parallel, a large sample of IT managers were surveyed on a variety of topics, including how many Web 2.0 applications they believed were in use on their networks. One-third estimated the number at less than eight.

In reality, FaceTime’s actual network traffic data shows an average of 49 Web 2.0 applications installed in each of the 80 reporting locations. These applications include social networking (with Facebook topping the list), instant messaging, Web-based IM, streaming media, IPTV, P2P file sharing, Web conferencing, VoIP and anonymizers. 

What’s an anonymizer you say? For users whose employers block Facebook.com – or gambling or porn sites – it’s a godsend. Where there’s a will, there’s a way – but there’s also a solution for IT to regain control.

Yes, I believe that in reality most IT managers know that Web 2.0 is pervasive in their networks – but what I don’t think they really have a handle on is what employees are doing with these applications on a day-to-day basis. And that’s worth understanding.

We’ll be looking more at what’s really going on in corporate networks over the next few weeks. Stay tuned.