Akhil who had been working in the company for the last three years is disappointed with the way the company has reacted. “Chatting for an hour or two in the midst of a 12-hour schedule is reasonable and justified,” he said. Though all 20-something colleagues are also of the same opinion. The 40-plus IT administrators of the company have monitored and recorded several hours of chatting and thousands of hits on Orkut everyday.

But the latest buzz is that IT software and large corporation all over the country have started imposing restrictions on Internet usage in general and social networking sites like Orkut, Youtube, Fropper and MySpace in particular. The HR teams of these companies have accused these sites of being a major distraction, hampering productivity and efficiency of employees, increasing broadband costs and contributing to frequent job shifts.

“Scrapping was just for networking with people of similar taste; it caused no harm.” says Rashi Grover, a PR executive who has also been fired from her company for the same reason. Her company’s managers complain, “Employees have started using Orkut to share company information and database with people in other similar companies or working on similar product line and clients.”

It is not merely IT companies but professional law firms that are imposing restrictions on these sites. Says Piyush Sinha who runs a law firm for corporate lawyers in Delhi: “I have blocked these sites completely and have informed employees about the consequences if the company finds them accessing the same through proxy sites.”

An important reason for young people moving on to social networking sites seems to be job leads. Simran Singh, a senior manager in a Delhi based HR and headhunting firm says, “We have blocked these networking sites because we saw employees using it more for job hunting and sourcing data for personal use.”

While all corporate, IT software companies and services centric companies like GenPact, American Express, HCL and I-Gate where productivity is measured in hours worked have already blocked these sites through corporate firewall, sectors like banking and media are still in a fix whether to block them or not considering their play@work HR policies. For young people like Akhil and Rashi, it looks like the ‘fun’ is over and it’s time to work.

Social networking, what’s that?

A social networking website is a virtual space a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users. In the past two years, such sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages almost everybody today.

Orkut: Run by Google, it is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. It permits users to access another user’s friends and chat with the ones they like. It also permits users to create various communities and invite other members.

Hi5: Like Orkut this too is an invitation-only website. Hi5 allows users to post their messages to on bulletin boards and upload videos. Users can make their top lists and categorise people under various heads.

MySpace: Like Youtube, MySpace allows one to share videos and music. One can also join the bloggers’ list forums or just go job hunting on it.