Facebook Face Off
CNN's Phil Black reports on a growing global conflict -- the battle to keep Facebook out of the office.

This London public relation's company is a Facebook-friendly workplace. At some point during the day, pretty much everyone here gets involved in on-line social networking.

Some, like Abbie Cohen, do it more than others.

"Do you waste time work on Facebook?”

"No, never. ”

That’s not what her colleague say.

"How many Facebook friends do you have?”

"Er, about 270, which isn’t, I mean, some people have less, some people have 500 . So it’s not that many. ”

Abbie is just one office worker caught up in the world wide phenomenon. Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, they provide another way of staying in touch with people and escaping the office existence. For bosses it is a new technology, but in all debate. Are personal distraction's on the job acceptable?

"The technology and people to use the technology is outpaced. Bosses' understanding the technology itself. ”

Niall Mckinney conducted a survey for the marketing industry. Which He says proved Facebooking at the work is not a big deal.

"People in average spend less than 10 minutes a day on Facebook, and not only that, only around 17% of people actually use Facebook work through work, so what people are using the social networking sites in the work place, they are not on average using excessively. ”

But an increasing number of bosses disagree and have banned social networking sites in their offices. Britain’s Unions say that’s not fair.

"Some employers are telling employees they are saving lot of life to use Facebook and only on those other websites work at all, which are in poor management. ”

The ban's been inspired the creation of Facebook protest groups, demanding more trust from their employers. But other groups aren't helping the cause. These pages are dedicated to self-confessed off the slackers who both about spending much of their working day on Facebook. That’s the extreming, but for many it has become a daily temptation.

" I think it’s definitely a tendency to go in too much making it a busy threaten, but as long as you manage effectively, I think you can be quite ensured. "

"Obviously I have a very good excuse for using Facebook at work today, and we never do so normally. But employ groups say these sites reduce productivity because unlike personal emails and phonecalls, they are not limited to strike communication. We can spend hours browsing friends’ sites or making your own more impressive. Facebook alone has more than 37 million users. Bosses who want on-line networking out of the work place are facing off against a global army of workers. They grows bigger every day. "

Phil Black, CNN. London.