41 Responses to “Social Media #FAIL Indian Software Companies”

1. HAB
   January 27th, 2010 at 9:44 am

   

   Well, looks like you need to do your homework on social media in B2B. Don’t know who gave you the authority to comment in a forum as prestigious as this.

   Some facts:
   Infosys blogs: replies on blog posts a measure of their effectiveness? Wake up, hero. The Infosys team measures their effectiveness in obviously different ways. If five of the comments are from their target audience, who cares about the rest? And heard about SEO?

   TCS on Twitter: If you don’t want the info, don’t follow. The live tweet of the press conference has its faithfuls. That matters. Not what your “opinion” is. Who calls you (except yourself) an expert anyway?

   TCS on Facebook: I hope you got the last post was a week ago. Facebook wasn’t invented last century too. And TCS is neither Barack Obama, nor Coca Cola. So – traditional measures don’t matter.

   Well – you did get your objective right. Who would notice you if you didn’t mention Infy or TCS?

   Loser. You are #fail.

2. Chetan
   January 27th, 2010 at 9:47 am

   

   Well… ideally companies should. But them they have their dedicated & official website where they can and do put all things be it Annual report or Job openings. Maybe Companies have PR policies to blame or Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are designed keeping people in mind rather than companies. That’s why even a PR Manager at TCS or Wipro or HCL want to utilize Facebook can’t do that don’t know how to use “social networking site” effectively for companies purpose though he or she has account on Fb or Twitter.Perhaps, Facebook or Twitter simply don’t attract companies at all.

3. Do Homework Properly
   January 27th, 2010 at 9:54 am

   

   The official facebook page for TCS is here: http://www.facebook.com/TataConsultancyServices

   This man obviously didn’t do his homework. Hahahahha.

   What an EXPERT!

4. Sridhar
   January 27th, 2010 at 10:19 am

   

   Maybe we needn’t ape every fad ( or not). Dell is probably earning millions from twitter, but how much doesnt it contribute to their total revenue?

   Twitter is for brands : products & people. May not be suitable for the services most of our IT companies are in.

5. Krishna Iyer
   January 27th, 2010 at 11:09 am

   

   It is surprising to read some comments above. esp, the self righteous sounding HAB who in all probability works for Infy/TCS.

   It is not very uncommon that folks take criticism so lightly. But what you have highlighted is bang on. Whether the digs on the companies’ lethargy on social media is valid or not, your point on the sickening practice on paper emails is omnipresent. We talk of eco-friendliness while we continue to waste paper and toners endlessly.

   For folks who cant get the non-paper communication, its a far cry for them to realize the benefits of social media. If they can indeed use the phone beyond reading emails, it would be a positive.

   There are exceptions as well. Infy’s Gopalkrishnan is a gadget freak I read. But it is one thing at an individual level and another at a corporate culture level.

6. Nishant Modak
   January 27th, 2010 at 11:15 am

   

   What can you expect from companies which block access of internet to its employees?

7. sajan mani
   January 27th, 2010 at 11:18 am

   

   is it a problem with their PR attitude or companies view point it self?
   how to sell and spread the world by using social media s one thing tht urgently need n indian software market.

   its a very good post thnx again NASSCOM and vishalg.

8. Rishi Pradhan
   January 27th, 2010 at 11:27 am

   

   TCS surely have a fan page up facebook, but the henchos are using it as another PR news submission directory. All I see is news of events and their so called accomplishments. Their Marketing team still have head deep buried in sand and just cant get the social media at all. It is a medium to interact with outside world, and you can’t do it if its only you who speak.

   TCS twitter page is a laugh riot.

   Infosys is the same story.

   Vishal, I think its useless to write this post. These companies have become too old to innovate or understand social media. They can only hire fancy media/PR firms who are only trained to spam our mailboxes and not on social media. They will never learn.

9. Nidhi Agarwal
   January 27th, 2010 at 11:37 am

   

   TCS and Infosys only understand how to overbill their clients and works on body-shopping. They hire people not to do work but to show clients that so many people are working on their projects, and hence overcharge the clienst.

   Why do they need to be in social media. Its better for them to avoid as much contact they can have from outside world to avoid getting exposed.

   I think author of this post has gotten it all wrong, it’s a planned strategy to avoid real world interaaction so that they can hide their real business.

10. Nitin Reiki
    January 27th, 2010 at 11:53 am

    

    INFOSYS, TCS, WIPRO etc are companies run by people in their forties, fifties. Don’t expect them to be a techie and understand social media.

    Their fan pages, twitter accounts are run by expensive PR companies. People work their to enjoy life. You get transport, good food, less work, more bench etc.

11. Laugh riot
    January 27th, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    

    I am surprised at the comments. Very surprised. Social media measurement remains a puzzle. And you expect Indian IT companies to do what?

    The best examples of social media strategies for business are by Dell and Comcast. But they have a direct customer approach.

    Anyway this doesn’t seem to be a serious “social media analysis” page, so I am wasting my time here.

12. Shankar Iyer
    January 27th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    

    I am a recruiter from a top IT company. I track Infosys, TCS, Wipro and others on Twitter and I got this URL.

    I am neck-deep in social media. LinkedIn is like manna from the heaven to me.

    What I don’t understand – why should we advertise in LinkedIn to use it? I use Twitter to tweet my jobs. I use Orkut to reach out to people.

    I don’t use official presence as it distracts me from doing my job.

    I wonder… is Vishal G aware of how to use social media? I doubt it. This post is more like a rant, actually.

13. Vijay
    January 27th, 2010 at 6:04 pm

    

    Vishal, Your observations are bang on. My own experience with a well known IT firm was depressing. The Corp Comm team wanted to know “how many quality leads would we get from a Linkedin Group”. End of Social Media initiative.
    I just put together a presentation on “What CXO’s and Brands can learn from @AnandMahindra” : http://bit.ly/mahindra

14. Ashok
    January 27th, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    

    It’s good to see these many opinions. Think the author is fundamentally pointing at the fact that our leading tech companies are not making the most of the current day’s technologies themselves. It’s very similar of techies (re: programmers) being apprehensive to use net banking developed by them or their fellow community members, say 3 or 5 years ago (basis personal observations).

    However, Vishal seems to have gone a little overboard in being extremely critical with what appears to be high level observations…

15. Rahul
    January 27th, 2010 at 11:56 pm

    

    Well, many companies block social networking sites and Gmail , Yahoo and other mail services , Youtube etc. There’s a good deal of censorship and employees are “not supposed to utilise company assets and work hours for non-official use” , which is a fair premise if only if was applied across the board , not just the non-managerial staff.

    And you’d be surprised how un-techie India IT employees are , many don’t even have PCs at home , and many who do don’t want to sit on front of a PC again after 8-12 hours of work in front of a PC. Penny-pinching management ensures even those who have the makings of becoming geeks are stifled .

16. Paritosh Sharma
    January 28th, 2010 at 4:40 am

    

    Interesting post this. Well, what we need to look in for is, once a company scales upto the size of an Infy or TCS they have their processes. Now obviously the fad is social media and somehow getting into it. The tightly pressed PR teams just to be there, will start shouting about themselves which is never the right way.

    I think what needs to be done is: help these organization set up an entire social media business rule sheet. Like other domains they will have their set of rules which “the internal social champions” will follow and every rule backed up with strong statistics (which is very much possible in social media).

    Also, being on social media has nothing to do with being a techie or non-techie.

    I feel most of the comments above are an expression of their own understanding and “perception” rather than actually reacting to the post @viijaysankaran I really like your presentation, following @anandmahindra since sometime

17. Sridhar
    January 28th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    

    Those who just started blasting Vishal’s observations or his qualifications to comment on such topics simply seem lost. He certainly has earned the right (read about his achievements and his activities before making such comments).

    Getting to the topic, while I agree with Vishal’s comments at a general level, I believe IT companies are aware of the need for Social Media (I guess that is why TCS has 2 pages on Facebook… ).

    Infosys closed a deal last year USING Twitter. http://www.pluggd.in/infosys-closes-a-deal-on-twitter..twitter-is-surely-going-mainstream-297/ and http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=365277

    They just need to be a lot more active, with initiatives taken at the highest level, as rightly pointed out by Vishal.

18. Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
    January 28th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    

    While some comments here have picked out some specific issues with what the author says, his broad message is clear. Many Indian tech firms are not comfortable with social media. That’s a fact. You don’t broadcast a financial report line-by-line on Twitter… And to those who think that social communication does not apply in a B2B environment, well wake up. Remember the times when people said email is not required for use by a ‘real’ business? There is a lot of food for thought in this article and it would help a few people to take on board these general views, rather than picking out any individual issue with an example.

19. Pooja Kumar
    January 29th, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    

    Interesting observations here, I would agree to some extent that social media marketing isn’t as sophisticated in Indian Tech companies compared to some global counterparts & remains on the conservative side.
    I feel though that the good thing about this medium is that you can always re-invent yourself after listening & participating in conversations like these.
    In my company (I’m from the marketing team at KPIT Cummins, but views here are my own) We have a social media presence & have seen a measure of success through our twitter & our facebook page and we soon plan to add a jobs section to our LinkedIn page; though I have to admit we did go through our initial hurdles of experimenting with thinks like automated tweets (BAD IDEA!), not defining who we wanted to reach out to through facebook and the like – we’re now hopefully wiser.

20. abhishek manocha
    February 1st, 2010 at 10:59 am

    

    The comments above are really offensive, I wont take the same path, but let me say this unequivocally, truth is all around us, only blinds, schemers and liars don’t see it. Choose your category!

    did you guys even care to read his brief bio at the end!

    Well, what the hell is recruitment team for, if it can keep track of the evolving way to interact and communicate. Are they just for cold-calling.

    And PR team which hasn’t heard of twitter, Social Media is not worthy of its next pay cheque. they need to be fired.

    (BTW, I don’t have the credentials of Vishal. And if you guys can lambast him like this, I am expecting much worse for me , but at least give it a thought, somebody can scratch the surface and see what we are missing. If somebody is criticizing you right, he is better than your best friend, isn’t it? )

21. Prasoon Joshi
    February 1st, 2010 at 11:12 am

    

    The message is clear (though rather sarcastic), Indian IT biggies need to ‘learn’ how to fasttrack innovation – in this case learning a new way to attract business and talent!
    I work for one company mentioned in the post and comments and I have personally seen the mega-slow approach to any new thing that shows up. The way these companies have been digesting the open source revolution is a perfect example – too little, too late and that too after a recession that demanded for major cost cuttings across all processess and spendings!
    Thanks for the post!

22. kalyan sagar
    February 1st, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    

    Rightly said, business should adopt social media to give better value to customers.Being in the business of social media for last 18months i don’t want to blame the companies that they are not adopting the social media properly.Equally to blame are the social media consultants and companies which do not have a proper framework or proof of concept to convince the clients about the their major pain points like,how and what to measure and how to handle negativity.
    I think we should take ourselves more seriously and then others can’t ignore us.

23. Jagadeesh K
    February 1st, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    

    Vishal’s points are correct. But the road he chose to drive them home took the posting to a detour.

    Its a fact that use of social media marketing is yet to pick up in India. I am not sure about how TCS and Infy are utilizing it. But I see a lot of ‘START UP’ companies in IT takes a great advantage of facebook, twitter etc. They are using these apps for business networking, marketing etc. I work closely with IT start-ups in Kerala. I am seeing the effect also.

    Making notes on email-print outs is ok with me as long as it serves the purpose. But how do you make sure that they get all the documents into their smartphone everytime?

    The effect of targeted use of social media tools came out quiet evident in the recent U.S Presidential Election. There was a surety that such a movement will amass public opinion. That’s why people used it. There was a cause.
    Mr. Obama even had a young consultant for his facebook campaigns who worked with Mark Zuckerberg at Stanford.

    I think we must spent some time to think about the purpose for which we should use SM tools. Even for placing ads, people still go for traditional medium. They simply give want better reach – deeper and wider.

    Perhaps one should look at HR and Ad industry to get a better picture of SM’s influence in India.

24. s.sivaraj
    February 1st, 2010 at 9:56 pm

    

    To go through all the posts by a non teche senior citizen wants to share the thought of how the younger and future leaders in all fields of developing activity get a proper and suitable guidance from the present who are actively involved in shaping the younger generation.

25. Vishal Gondal
    February 1st, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    

    thanks for all the abusive emails letters and blank calls..really enjoyed it…

    and for the people with encouraging words thank you…

    however the key point is that the human factor in the indian IT sector is becoming more and more like dealing with robots..

    these robots are programmed to follow PROCESS, obey ORDERS, meet DEADLINES and are kind of grown in large training farms..

    since most of the bigger IT companies are not used to an environment where ‘humans’ can talk back to them or give feedback.. they are perplexed…

    we are entering a new era of communication and consumption where employees, customers, shareholders ur family almost all of them are not just going to be passive receiver of company information and propaganda material but they are going to talk back and have an opinion on everything..

    this is not only true for IT sector but all sectors which deal with humans

    social media is going to be the FABRIC of how we deal with people and not just a MARKETING technique which u read in business school

26. Oscar Lopez
    February 2nd, 2010 at 12:38 am

    

    This is the problem that businesses face with social media. Everybody is out there calling himself an expert.

    While the author does well to highlight some issues in using social media (or not using it properly) what he fails to see or cite is that these companies ARE using social media, and they are not afraid to be out there. Which is quite admirable considering that no one has really figured out this space. I shudder to think what a company advised by Vishal (if it ever hires him) would do in this space. Probably add something sensational in the hope of getting noticed?

    Please note that Vishal’s Twitter post mentions “Wipro”. Nowhere in his article does Wipro get mentioned. The technique is simple – every social media “expert” worth his 180 characters knows that people keep a watch on keywords. What if the folks at Infy, TCS and Wipro were watching how they get mentioned? Good trick, vishal. Or should I say GOD trick?

    It is easy for someone like Mark Kobayishi Hillary to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude – he himself has been known NOT to respond to criticism of his views – especially in the wake of his diatribe against Indian software companies in the UK. Mark, you will do well to read your own words and follow them.

    For other posters, some of them pick this opportunity to do a little TCS-Infy bashing on their own. For others, you would be better advised to listen to quite a few more experts (some of them like Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Shel Israel etc do a really good job) and finding out your own balanced approach.

    Don’t get bogged down by a random GOD using the Nasscom forum to fire at you.

    All the best, Infosys, TCS, Wipro.

    (Disclosure: I am an employee of one of the above three firms. I have a vested interest in their brand)

    BTW – Did anyone read this: http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/blog/disclaimer-guidelines/

    I pretty much think Vishal’s post could have done with a good edit. He loses out on his points. Needs a ten-year-old to teach him the etiquette of blogging in a Nasscom forum

27. Jesus Christ
    February 2nd, 2010 at 12:43 am

    

    Jesus Christ. NASSCOM, please read your terms and conditions. Just about anybody can post anything out here.

28. Wake up Nasscom
    February 2nd, 2010 at 2:04 am

    

    It is distressing to note that the flagship body of the Indian IT industry allows an unmoderated and open-to-abuse blogging platform.

    It seems just about anybody – or even a script – can get away with posting anything in this space.

    The original post may not exactly follow blogging etiquette as per the guidelines of this web site, but the later comments – especially the one marked just above “Jesus Christ” are more distressing.

    It doesn’t take much to create a secure blogging platform where at least the email ID is authenticated or even with some amount of moderation. Perhaps the Online Partners “Iridium Interactive” need to do some work, but I think this should come to the notice of the NASSCOM governing body.

    I would suggest:
    a) A user registration for every commentator
    b) With an email authentication
    c) A profile for every blogger/commentator
    d) A provision for sign-in using LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook credentials
    e) An active moderation on top of that

    This shouldn’t be hard to do. You can use OpenID from js-kit.com or DisQus. Quite simple.

    Well – the premier flag bearer and proponent of the Indian IT industry has more than a little bit of learning to do from this experience.

    Saddens me, but one can learn and do better the next time.

29. Vishal Gondal
    February 2nd, 2010 at 3:57 am

    

    just for the record the nasscom blogging platform is quiet robust it is able to capture all the spam and even able to provide us IP address and other details of posts.

    using this i can tell u that the Jesus Christ post and the Oscar Lopez post came from the same person using IP address 115.118.244.42

30. Siddharth Menon
    February 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 am

    

    Well his observation is correct to certain extend. But what is more imp is why is this happening. Like somebody correctly pointed out ..

    Most of the Big Indian Companies are ” Service Based ” and not ” Product Based “. For them Band is important to their Clients, present and future employees.

    Its all together a different eco-sytem that how I feel.

31. Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
    February 2nd, 2010 at 1:31 pm

    

    I’m not sure what Oscar Lopez means about me not responding to criticism… So where is that then and what does he mean? My views are posted on the blog in articles and in comments, and written in my own name, with my contact details easily available on the NASSCOM Connect profile. I publish what I think regardless of who I might be working with. Perhaps “Oscar” is just upset about this discussion touching a nerve?

32. Oscar Lopez, where are you? « mark kobayashi-hillary
    February 2nd, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    

    [...] seems already that the debate over Indian companies using social media has touched a nerve. A recent blog post by Vishal Gondal criticised the lack of insight many Indian tech firms are showing when it comes to social media. He [...]

33. Jessie paul
    February 2nd, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    

    Umm, Marcom is about communicating to your target audience. And there is enough data around that not just indian CEOs, but US CEOs aren’t all that hooked on Social Media. So why would a high-end F500 B2B firm invest a great deal in this? Obviously they would set up shop to explore the medium and also prevent squatters, but until social media went mainstream and resulted in business it would be hard to justify a massive investment.

    Re the LinkedIn comment, the Indian biggies have enough brand pull through other means to attract applications, and for niche/senior skills anyways you would use a more personalized route.

    PS: Till last month I headed marketing for Wipro, which somehow has missed the author’s attention

34. Vishal Gondal
    February 2nd, 2010 at 11:25 pm

    

    dear jessie,

    apologies if your are feeling offended that i did not mention the name of wipro in the blog post.

    Thanks for pointing out the fact the most IT companies think that they have bigger brands in the job market in india as compared to google, microsoft & cisco and attract a lot of quality resources.

    since you have been the CMO of one of the big IT firms could you tell us who actually your target audience are ?

    Vishal

35. Prabhakar Pratim Borah
    February 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 am

    

    I would like to declare that i am a former employee of TCS. I have seen the ways how TCS works in a project which was implemented in Bahrain. I was there for 2 consecutive years. I have also have been in TCS Hyderabad for about 6 months. I have also gone through their TCS training too. Though it is out of context but its is to be noticed how TCS in particular have been operating. I was very disgusted by its bureaucratic approach, non-compliance of IT standards in implementing Codes, Very Ineffective Training Module & Organizing, and the biggest of the lot… under-utilization of the creative capabilities of Indian IT Fraternity (This however, TCS will always fail to deliver as it mostly does maintenance and coding to use which is very narrowly defined by clients for their custom use.). Its actually no surprise that it has not been following up with the latest technology trends and utilizing them to the fullest. Actually, asking for that will be quite a lot from TCS. One thing I sure learnt in TCS is how not to build and run a company. I only Hope TCS someday can become a more valuable company apart from just creating easy-to-live-thru-jobs. The future is in making products rather than just services. TCS is like a over-grown dinosaur, dat has lived beyond its time. TCS was founded in 1969, dat was when man landed on moon! India & the World has come quite far from dat day… I guess, dere are more interesting frontiers in IT then just to deliver custom client programs or just maintain programs left-overs built by other service companies. New frontiers in IT products can necessarily be achieved by newer and more dynamic companies which have more drive, enthusiasm and most importantly can successfully challenge the convention! I can feel it.. such revolutions are already on its way… Amen

36. Vijay Sankaran
    February 3rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    

    @Jessi_Paul
    I am surprised large co’s like WIPRO are still waiting for “social media to go mainstream”. Both in terms of b2b and b2c, it already has in the West. And it’s not just about waiting for the client CEO to start using social media.

    Even to reach that elusive segment, IBM india put together an interesting site-www.CEOLessonsFromCricket.com with Harsha Bhogle as the key blogger. The content & execution could have been better, but it’s a good attempt.

    Here’ some IBM stats fm a link in my tweetstream this morning:
    How IBM Uses Social Media : http://bit.ly/9pFKM4
    * Thousands of IBM bloggers, (http://bit.ly/bQmIda)
    * No IBM corporate blog or Twitter account as it believes in employees being the voice of the company
    * 17,000 internal blogs
    * 100,000 employees using internal blogs
    * 53,000 members on SocialBlue (like Facebook for employees)
    * A few thousand “IBMers” on Twitter
    * Almost 200,000 on LinkedIn
    * As many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-sourcing “jams”
    * 50,000 in alum networks on Facebook and LinkedIn

    PS: I work for a digital marketing agency and IBM is NOT our client! Readers can check out how CISCO, SAP, HP and so many of the enterprise players are integrating social marketing into their business & sales strategies with measurable results.

37. Apoorva Dangore
    February 5th, 2010 at 8:27 pm

    

    //social media is going to be the FABRIC of how we deal with people and not just a MARKETING technique which u read in business school//

    This would be a very deep insight if this trend unfolds as described.Does anyone know if there is comprehensive research done on new social media?

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39. IT Outsourcing
    March 27th, 2010 at 10:51 am

    

    I have personally seen the mega-slow approach to any new thing that shows up. The way these companies have been digesting the open source revolution is amazing.

40. Robin Jacob Abraham
    June 21st, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    

    Although I agree that PR seeding and impersonal posts are not a good way of going about doing Social Media, I am wondering if the metrics being used to measure success are correct. For any IT marketing initiative, interaction with the key decision makers is critical to drive sales. The Key decision makers, on the other hand, are constantly in the lookout for information around products/services/companies that fit their need…needs are very specific as well. In such an environment, I am sure that an Infosys blog/s is a very good initiative as it positions the brand as a credible expert on multiple subject matters…a good metric would be “How many of these people actually got in touch with Infosys after reading through the blogs?” or “How many companies preferred an Infosys over another brand with their blogs content being a contributing factor?”
    The critical question to answer here is “Who am I targeting through a social media initiative?” and then decide on the metrics.

41. Dimple Suhanda
    August 25th, 2010 at 10:26 am

    

    Social Media when used effectively is undoubtedly a boon but there are FATAL RISKS attached to it. Like for example: Any Screw ups on the part of the IT Giants will spread like wild fire on Social Media. Moreover, the investors and employees might turn against and spread negative word of mouth when not delivered their interests.

    The B2B format of IT Giants is not very apt for Social Media promotion or business development or for that matter Internal or External Communication. This industry feeds on US and UK clients and the use of Social Media for Communication or Brand Building can turn out to be fatal for the Organization. Already the Scrip Performance of IT cos is highly volatile and reliance on Social Media will add fuel to fire.

    In a way, I approve the IT companies NO SHOW on Social Media…!!!
    Cheers!!!!