There's a special sort of ridiculousness to this Ad Age survey that shows about 35 million workers spend an average of 9% of their work week reading blogs, meaning about 40 minutes per day.

First off, as the story says, since blogs often link to other news sites it's hard to track the numbers. More importantly, though, there's not enough weight given to the idea that some of these blogs are actually work related. That's the real shame, since blogs can be - and are - being utilized to increase the knowledge employees have of their given field. I'm not saying that that's the major reason people are reading blogs, but it is significant.

Using myself as an example (since I can rely on myself to fill out my own survey) I can say that I spend about two hours a day reading not blogs but my RSS feeds from blogs and other sites. That's more efficient since I couldn't possibly read the 200 sites individually in a day and something that, in light of the results of this survey, employers should encourage. Most of those are work related in some way, shape or form. However, as a blog creator I can also tell you that a lot of people are spending their working hours searching for the latest teaser trailer for Superman Returns and other movie marketing efforts.

Is this something that employers need to address? Absolutely, but in a way that encourages employees to learn about their industry and not just by shutting off non-work related internet access. That way leads to anger and resentment.