{"id":2015,"date":"2011-04-06T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2015"},"modified":"2011-04-06T07:00:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T15:00:13","slug":"social-media-engineers-not-yet-comfortable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/social-media-engineers-not-yet-comfortable\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: Engineers Not Yet Comfortable with Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Media and collaboration tools like LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter. \u00a0Facebook has more than 500 million users <\/a>with more than half of all Internet-using Americans<\/a> having accounts. \u00a0While Social Media has originated in consumer space, organizations are increasingly adopting Social Media tools<\/a> like Facebook and Twitter, or similar collaboration tools having a business slant, \u00a0for use in business.<\/p>\n

Discussion groups on LinkedIn <\/a>and Facebook <\/a>that are\u00a0specific to business and professional topics are becoming very popular. \u00a0But despite this, one professional group that has shied away from the use of Social Media has been engineers.<\/p>\n

A survey <\/a>by Design News<\/a> found that about half of all engineers have accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and even check in frequently, but their usage of Social Media is restricted primarily for personal use. \u00a0Only 24.5 percent say that they use these services to discuss or to gain information about their own profession. \u00a0And when engineers do use these services for work-related purposes, it only happens on a daily basis 15.7 percent of the time. \u00a0Nearly half (47 percent) say that they’ve never used social networks for anything that is work related.<\/p>\n

The reason for engineers’ reluctance to use these social tools is:<\/p>\n