In term of social networks, Facebook is the undisputed king, and to an office environment, Facebook, as a social network, can be its worst nightmare. It seems that nowadays everyone has an account on Facebook, and according to a recent study, there are 1.49 billion active monthly users on the social network alone. With that incredible amount of patronage, chances are, some of your employees are active users of the website.  According to the same survey, 77% of Facebook users use the social media sharing site while at work, they sign on using company computers, the corporate network’s bandwidth, and while on the clock, keep up with their friends, update their statuses, share last night’s bar pictures, and answer any pending private messages.

In terms of productivity, any and all distraction in the office takes away from work output. Yes, there are some distractions that are unavoidable; a quick trip to the company cooler can turn into a heated exchange about last night’s buzzer beater at the local basketball game or, a one too many trips to the coffee machine will certainly take a few minutes here and there.

For Facebook on the other hand, users are spending an average of 7 hours logged into the network, with about 2 to 3 of those hours logged in from work.

Most companies have a policy about visiting non work related websites from company owned computers, but sometimes policies are not followed and staff still uses company equipment for personal dealings. One way to combat such faults and misuse of company resources is to block unwanted websites, in this case, Facebook, from being accessed from someone’s computer.

Steps to block Facebook using windows host file.

1. Press Windows key + R

2. Once Run window comes up, copy following script into the Open field

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

3. When Open with, choose Notepad to open hosts file with

4. Copy and Paste the following into the computers Hosts file, make sure to paste after the information already there, do not erase any of the text on the file.