20% of the U.S workers’ working time is wasted in surfing the internet and chatting online; in specific, an online survey of 2,057 employees by online compensation company Salary.com found about six in every 10 workers admit to wasting time at work with the average employee wasting 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour working day. Personal Internet use topped the list as the leading time-wasting activity according to 34% of respondents, with 20.3% then listing socializing with co-workers and 17% conducting personal business as taking up time.

This is by no means an exclusive story of America; in fact, it is shared by many other countries all over the world. Those net-addicted workers who spend part of their office hours in non-work related online activities are undoubtedly dragging down the workplace productivity. Then how to plug the problem?

At present, the seemingly “most effective” way agreed and carried out by many companies is relying on some technological surveillance means to track the employees’ use of the office internet. But are those policies really “effective”? Unfortunately, issues related to workplace privacy are triggered due to such special monitoring mechanisms, which in turn, induce to unwanted and costly litigations. Therefore, these policies, in the long run, must fail to boost the declining workplace productivity. Then, can we find a way out that can turn out to be really effective?

“Such temptation is always present, especially in fields of employment where one experiences a lot of down time.” said by a supervisor of a chicago-based trading company. Attention please! The key words here are “down time”. It is exactly due to too many “down time” at the employee’s disposal that the private use of office internet becomes easily available. Thus, can the “down time” be cut down? Or can the time of finishing each specific task be at the managers’ disposal? If this is possible, then the workplace productivity is really promising to be rejuvenated.

Fortunately, BPOVIA virtual assistant is very likely to make the dream come true. BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant firm in the world. BPOVIA is the first and only virtual assistant service provider in the world ever won the prestigious "Top 100 global companies in 2008" awards by Red Herring magazine and "2008 Red Herring Asia 100 Most Promising Technology Companies" Awards. By hiring such a virtual assistant from BPOVIA, working time can be saved to a great extent! This is because the VA’s working time is totally at the manager’s own disposal. The manager can add, modify, cancel, or suspend any service at any time based on his/her business demand. Furthermore, it is even more cost-saving, for there will be no other extra fees such as staff welfare and taxes compared with a full-time employee.

A double-edged sword as the internet is, it is always likely to reduce costs and increase profits for companies. The success secret, however, lies in those wise users who can make the best use of the most efficient on-line assistance services to create themselves the most profits.

Clones of Facebook, some of which are of similar color, font and layout with Facebook, have appeared suddenly in local languages around the world. These websites provide identical core services, letting users post pictures, make groups and choose friends.

Facebook Inc global campaign began in February and has since rolled out 18 foreign-language editions, including Norwegian and Czech, with plans for 54 more. However, all those clone websites complicates the campaign.

Facebook’s international challenges illustrate just some of the ways global expansion can bedevil major US web companies as they seek swarms of users and advertising dollars in new markets.

Winning over people who are already hooked on local-language sites hocking similar services with a similar look is Fcaebook’s particular problem.

In Russia, for example, where Facebook launched in June, the entrenched social-networking engine online is Vkontakte, a Russian-language Facebook clone that boasts more than 14 million users.

Facebook officials predict that they will win finally, partly because they can spend more resources on improving their sites than upstarts can.Facebook said it would extend its translation tools to those developers to make Facebook even more compelling for overseas markets. It has a strong network of outside programmers who write web applications for the site.

In additional, its users can connect with friends from other countries while some local sites can’t do.

Facebook spokesman Jaime Schopflin said: “Although they can get traction in individual countries, they can’t compete on a global scale.”

But social-networking sites reflect real life, and many Russians dread moving to a neighborhood where they have no friends.

Moscow resident Galina Ryazanova, 21, a recent college graduate who uses both web sites said: “All of my Russian friends are on Vkontakte, and I don’t think they will shift to Facebook because everyone is already set up on Vkontakte.”

To keep up with her non-Russian friends, Ryazanova visits Facebook about once a month, she said, but uses Vkontakte three or four times a week. She criticized Facebook for pulsing too many distracting applications and for allowing users to translate part of the site, bringing what she called poor-quality Russian.

In many English-language countries, Facebook governs the social-networking market and is rising rapidly in other countries. It is the most popular social-networking site in Britain and one of the top three in France, tracking company comScore reported.

But it seems that Facebook gains ground less quickly in countries such as Germany and Russia. According to comScore, Germany’s StudiVZ and Russia’s Vkontakte are widely outdrawing Facebook.

Facebook software engineer Alex Moskalyuk said his company has no direct strategy to attract users from competitor sites.

He also said, “You can spend your time worrying about the competitors or you can spend your time innovating your product. We choose the latter, not the former.”

That strategy obviously changed in June, when Facebook filed an intellectual-property lawsuit against German clone StudiVZ in a federal court in California.

Facebook claims StudiVZ unfairly copied its content, but StudiVZ says Facebook is trying to stifle the competition as it pursues the global market. The faceoff has fueled speculation that a string of lawsuits against clone sites could begin.

The stakes are high. Microsoft snared 1.6 percent of Facebook for $240 million in 2007, valuing Facebook at roughly $15 billion. Investors poured $430 million this year into the parent company behind China’s Facebook-like Xiaonei. Der Spiegel reported that a publishing company bought StudiVZ for $132 million last year.

Vkontakte dominates the Russian market along with one other site, which is geared more towards adults.

“Vkontakte has already become like a habit,” Nikita Glushik, 19, said as he checked the site at a Moscow Internet café. He said he had never heard of Facebook.

Russia’s renewed sense of national pride might be enough to give an edge to Vkontakte, with the sites so identical.

“Vkontakte is Russian and Facebook is American, this is the biggest difference,” Ryazanova said.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

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