The cost of communities

INDIA: Being a member of a social networking community can be useful for finding friends — and jobs. Now an Indian organization has calculated what such sites cost employers in lost time.

India's Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) questioned 4,000 people across India about their social networking habits. Nearly all of the people questioned say they use the sites for meeting new people, romancing, or other non-work related activities while at their jobs.

On average the employees spent an hour of company time on the sites per day. “Close to 12.5 per cent of productivity of human resource in the corporate sector is misappropriated each day, since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours,” the report states.

Four in ten users of social networks in India admit that they have built their entire page or profile while at work.

Currently, India’s most popular networking site is Orkut, which is owned and operated by Google. Others include Facebook , MySpace and LinkedIn. More than 75 per cent of the workers with an Orkut account say they check it during office hours, and four in ten of the users admit tthat they have built their entire page or profile while at work.

Many firms in India and elsewhere have already blocked employees' access to social networking sites during office hours. "As a matter of fact, the growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity, " DS Rawat, Assocham's secretary general, told the BBC.