Mediaboss Marketing

We circulated a 21-question poll earlier this summer and received more than 800 responses from readers. Virtually all engineers are aware of social networking sites and platforms and fully 70 percent use them.

But, significantly, nearly a third don't use social networks at all, largely because they feel such use is a "waste of time" or not relevant to their life and work.

Most popular sites

Of those engineers who do engage with social networking, 85 percent use LinkedIn and 60 percent use Facebook. Site preference falls off dramatically after that:

More than a third of respondents (35 percent) view social networking sites at least once day, but hardcore users (more than two hours a day) make up only 3 percent of overall usage.

We found that only one in four users are not allowed to access social networking tools at work.

Use for engineering? Hardly

Perhaps the most eye-opening results concerned how engineers use social networking tools and platforms. Seventy-one percent of respondents never use social networking to request or share business information, and 81 percent never use the technology to collaboratively solve technical problems or find new products and suppliers.

More than half (56 percent) use social networking to network with colleagues but the rest never use it for that purpose.

Read the rest here:
EE Times survey: Engineers aren't using social networking for work