Social Media has prompted more social debates than any other online segment in the last couple of years. Nobody has been left untouched from the infectious charm of social media networks – CEOs , Marketing bosses to hard core techies, everybody is finding some juice somewhere in their preferred social circles. Kings to clowns, Presidents to party-freaks , all are nurturing their own group of  fan following – one tweet, one wall post at a time. Isn’t that engrossing and hyper-social without a dime  out of your wallet.

But, whoever is a part of human society knows one fact for sure – “There is nothing called a Free lunch”. May be Karl Marx cannot detect it, but the pennies are slipping through the cracks somewhere. Somebody is paying for the hyper-involvement in the social networks.

(Image Credit: www.cartoonstock.com)

Who is at the receiving end?

It’s time for the big bosses to raise a brow….

The UK social media office engagement figures look like this -

2 millions x 1 hour / day = Social involvement during the office hours [Sample size = 1000 British workers]. = $23 billion dollars

Its is estimated that the US social engagement index during the office hours will be higher the British figure and China might be catching up fast – It’s a different reason china decided to ban Google, when in fact Facebook might be making a dent in its productivity as well as communist ideology on an hourly basis.

Well, let’s for a moment jump to the other side of the fence, where the employees are perched – The intelligence that you get out of the chorus is that the social networking is cost-free, global, knowledge-sharing university where years are saved every day – as employees, trouble-shooters and academia share the latest data, theories and algorithm – thus making every desktop a vibrant R&D hub – well, can you beat that?

Well, I agree with this cross-pollination potential of social and professional networks….

Once again, going back to the original spot. Looking from here, the corporate honchos would be in serious doubt whether millisecond is spent in knowledge dissemination and not personal frivolities…leaving it here for the moment….

As expected, it’s a spiraling debate  with too many angles and intangibles….

Adios…