It's a question that's been the subject of intense debate within many companies - who is (or should be) responsible for an organization's social networking efforts? There are a few schools of thought on this.

When organizations first began launching Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts a couple of years ago, a widely-held belief at the time was that oversight of a company's social media efforts should be handled by one of the communications functions such as marketing or public relations.

I'm both fascinated and baffled by stories and studies I come across regarding the use of social media within the workplace. There's still quite a bit of uncertainty, especially among neophyte organizations, as to whether or not to allow all employees or only workers in specific roles (i.e. marketing, customer service) to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social tools as part of their jobs.

It's understandable that some organizational decision-makers worry that staffers are going to spend most of the workday noodling around on Facebook and chatting with friends while productivity drops off a cliff. I recall similar concerns being voiced when instant messaging tools first came to the fore.

Lucy Kellaway, the caustic and sharp-eyed business columnist at the Financial Times, picked up a complaint that Starbucks outlets in the UK have a vaguely lavatory smell and watched the company response. Of course, it helped that the Tweet came from the political satirist Armando Iannucci, who has 80,000 followers.

Her report:  Within minutes, Darcy Willson-Rymer, the UK head of Starbucks, had replied: "Thanks for your feedback. Which store did you visit?"

I stopped at my local gas station to fill up my car and was surprised to see that gas prices were higher for self-service than for the full-service option. Clearly, I thought, that must be a mistake. But when I talked to the attendant he said his boss wanted to move away from self-service and offer full-service at less than his competitors were charging for self-service. At a time when money is tight, the owner believed that offering more service at a lower price was a way to distinguish his small gas station from the rest.