Have Indian IT companies missed the Social Media bus?

by rajarshi on April 9th, 2010

The phenomenon of Social Media means differently to different people and holds varied interpretations. To school and college attending kids it is just another means of fruitfully whiling their time away while pretending to learn many ‘soft skills’ so to say. For working professionals it is a platform for engaging themselves in discussions on forums and connecting with peers and colleagues while sharing valuable professional and work related insights into day to day matters.

For businesses at large it might have a far greater implication. Reaching out to potential customers, promoting a particular event, product or service, collaborating with partner companies and vendors and finally obtaining invaluable customer feedback. Yes, all this comprises the tenet of Social networking revolution. Yes of course, revolution is the second most overused word in the dictionary. Nevertheless, social media has caught up with out lives in an extremely pervasive manner.

What I would like to talk about here would be about businesses-specifically IT related corporations and businesses that are currently in operation in India. How do Indian companies use social media to leverage their advantage, if at all they do and if they dont, why dont they?

Let me put forward certain facts in front of you which have been opined for by Debjit Saha who closely follows the social media scene on the indian IT terrain.

1)Around 80 percent of the companies world wide search for potential employees through LinkedIn. The company recently opened office in India, a major reason for which is the large number of Indian users on LinkedIn. But surprisingly there is not a single job posting from any of the major Indian IT companies in LinkedIn.

2)Social media sites which are a rage like Twitter & Facebook are not used to their fullest by many of the big Indian IT Companies. An organisation as big as TCS has only over 1000 fans of it’s Facebook Page. This is not strange. This is in fact sinister.

3)The largest IT companies hardly have any presence on the blog sphere. Even the most popular blog pages of these companies might have under 10 comments and even fewer tweets.

4)Most of the senior managers of these IT companies (yes, the very creed of people who end up becoming the subject of envy and loathe of many subordinates) never use their fancy blackberries and email technology which they supposedly build for, to their full extent. They end up with reading printed emails most of the time.

So what is the reason which is making indian IT giants shy away from embracing social media on a more professional level? Is it merely harmless reluctance or does it stem from lack of know-how of using this dynamic tool? The latter seems a little improbable to me. I mean it would be preposterous to assume that people of such high calibre cracking codes and creating services are incapable of fully utilizing social media as a potent tool.

But what is equally baffling is why these Senior managers who love to indulge in wall writings on Facebook and updating people about their weekend plans on Twitter do not use this platform in a more holistic manner? What is holding them back. What is the point of investing 22.78 minutes of our time in creating your professional profile on LinkedIn and 12.31 minutes every month in updating it when no employer os going to look for it? Doesnt this exercise sound worthless?

The biggest irony is that while we are talking of using social media platform to our advantage, in most of the major IT companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro and IBM sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are banned and refuse to open. The reason meted out is that these sites hamper productivity at work and what this results in is a whole bunch of sulking employees who cant wait to get out of their offices to read the latest wall post or type away to glory on their mobile key pads.

Businesses need to make up for the lost time. They need to race to social media, learning as much as they can as fast as they can so as to not be left behind in this maddening race for the best talents and the best resources available. Formulating company policies is neither my realm of understanding nor authority, but even if organizations choose to ban social networking sites for access by their employees, they should invent ways to connect with the virtual world in some other way. Human networking is the key and it just cannot be brushed under the carpet.

It would only be too appropriate to say that indian IT firms have missed the bus of Social bonding platform and what seems could be a long wait at the bus stand before another one comes along. Their western peers have seized this wave and are riding high on it. Meetings are fixed, deals are inked and resources are shared online on this very platform almost everywhere in the developed world.

If India has to join the bandwagon it has to learn and then adopt. Embrace and welcome social media not only as an avenue for passing time but also for creating valuable business opportunities. The field is still nascent and that is the beauty of it. It is high time companies start cashing in.

As a concluding thought, I wanted to bring this video to you which many of you would have seen umpteen times. For those of you who have not, enjoy.