I don't have a Twiiter, I've never had a Twitter, and I never will have a Twitter. But in a sign of social networking site's soaring popularity, and possibly of the apocalpse, the USA Today's business section has done a feature story on it.

For the uninitiated. here's a quick summary of how the site works: people sit at their computers (or cell phones/PDAs) and type what they're doing at that very moment -- watching a movie, driving, working, cooking, heart surgery, etc.

The site has grown exponentially in popularity over the past year, with a current rank of 939 on Alexa. That's good enough to make it one of the biggest destroyers of office productivity in the market. Here's the thing: if you're Tweeting about what you're doing, you're not really doing that. If you say "I'm cooking", that is not strictly speaking true. At that very moment you are Twittering.

You might think that, with a recession going on, people would be likely to work harder. After all, jobs just aren't as plentiful as they were a year ago, and it seems like this would be a good time to knuckle down, put your nose to the grindstone, and give it your all.

Have you ever noticed how many work-related cliches there are?

At any rate, you would be wrong; in point of fact, the recession actually seems to be reducing productivity. According to a recent survey by Leadership IQ, a Washington DC-based business consulting firm, employees are wasting 44% more time than they were a year ago. The study queried 6,000 workers and discovered that, by their own admission, employees are currently goofing off for about 25% of their work day. The slowing economy and depressed job market seems to be imbuing workers with an increased sense of lassitude and is actually reducing their dedication to their jobs.