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By Rob Garretson

More business traffic last quarter went to Facebook than any other Web site -- twice the volume of visits to Google -- while YouTube and Facebook consumed more business bandwidth, dwarfing both Windows Update and Google, according to a new study.

Nearly 7 percent of all business Internet traffic goes to Facebook -- an uptick of 1 percentage point from the last quarter of 2009 and well above Google's 3.4 percent -- says the report from U.K.-based managed security services provider Network Box Limited (NBL). In NBL's analysis of 13 billion URLs, 10 percent of all corporate bandwidth is occupied by streaming YouTube videos, an increase of 2 percentage points from the previous quarter. Facebook now accounts for 4.5 percent of business bandwidth usage, compared with 3.3 percent for Windows Update and 2.5 percent for Google.

Yahoo's image server, YIMG, also showed up in the top five sites, consuming business bandwidth at 2.7 percent, bringing the total bandwidth drain from YouTube, Facebook and YIMG combined to more than 17 percent.

The NBL analysis comes on the heels of a separate survey the company conducted earlier this month that found "employees using applications on social networks" while at work was the top security concern among the 250 IT managers surveyed. The use of social networks on corporate networks was cited by 43 percent of respondents as a major concern. In a separate question, 36 percent of respondents said they are concerned about malware passed via social networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter, and employees trusting links sent by contacts within their social nets.

"The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work," said NBL Internet security analyst Simon Heron in a statement. "There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity."

According to the NBL study, the top five Web sites visited by businesses in Q1 2010 were:

1. Facebook -- 6.8 percent of all traffic
2. Google -- 3.4 percent of all traffic
3. Yimg (Yahoo's image server) -- 2.8 percent of all traffic
4. Yahoo! -- 2.4 percent of all traffic
5. Doubleclick -- 1.7 percent of all traffic

The top five "bandwidth busting" websites are:

1. YouTube -- 10 percent of all bandwidth used
2. Facebook -- 4.5 percent of all bandwidth used
3. Windows Update -- 3.3 percent of all bandwidth used
4. Yimg (Yahoo's image server) -- 2.7 percent of all bandwidth used
5. Google -- 2.5 percent of all bandwidth used

Comments (2)

	1. 04-21-2010 15:57
	It's also worth noting that the wide-open world of social media is shrinking to a duopoly of Facebook and Youtube. comscore's latest metrics show Facebook had 41 percent of March social media traffic, passing MySpace. Registered

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	2. 04-22-2010 08:36
	No doubt that some CIOs and business leaders will use this type of data to lobby for stricter controls over staff use of social networks and leisure sites, viewing such activity as a productivity drain (in addition to the bandwidth and security download concerns). Registered

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