I am not too surprised at this, as in the states many managers will fire employees for surfing on Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, etc. on company time.
It appears however in India, managers are taking a smarter approach--banning Orkut from the corporate network.
(Hindustan Times) Alpesh Kapadia, a middle-level executive in a Mumbai-based software services' major, is livid. His company recently blocked Orkut, the social networking website owned by Google. [...]
"I used Orkut to network with people with similar tastes," says Kapadia. A software developer, he used the site to meet Linux applications developers and discuss new technologies. He also pursued his interest in music through the site, and planned weekends with friends.
"If you block these sites, employees who frequent them during office hours get upset. But if you don't, there is a tendency for employees to visit these sites too frequently. This is counter-productive," said Khushroo Pithawala, senior vice-president, Datamatics.
Although there are ways to get around these blocks (as any Google search will reveal) it probably is best to find some way to compromise with management over accessing Orkut (perhaps setting up some Orkut friendly computers during lunch break).
Some users (not blogged here) have actually convinced management that Orkut was good for employee morale, although they pretty much begged their bosses everyday about it.
Note: An interesting point from the article was that some employees were using Orkut to find new jobs, something I posted about several months ago.
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