Back in late January, an entry on the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum blog caused a bit of a brouhaha. In it, Vishal Gondal, CEO of mobile games company Indiagames, accused Indian IT companies of failing to adapt to the world of social networking.

"This is surely one 'social' cause [that] the Indian IT leaders should wake up to," he wrote.

His posting attracted a stream of comments - some rather less measured, and more caustic, than others. On the whole, however, those who left comments appeared to agree with Vishal Gondal: there is still much work for such companies to do if they're really going to reap the benefits of Web 2.0.

I broadly agree, but with certain caveats. First, I think it's true of outsourcing companies everywhere in the world, not just India. Second, I think we need to recognise that the measures that Mr Gondal suggests for social networking success - a Facebook page, a Twitter account - don't necessarily translate well to the world of IT services and outsourcing.

It's a subject I thought I'd discuss with Raj Datta, chief knowledge officer at Indian IT and R&D services company MindTree. I first met Raj in London about three years ago and think he's a great person to speak to about social networking. That's because Raj's work at MindTree is driven by the belief that humans are "wired to share" and because social networking takes centre stage in helping Mindtree's workforce to share ideas and knowledge. In fact, the company has been using social software since 2003 and its overall philosophy has been "socio-technical" from the very beginning.

"I remember in 2006, I was chairing a panel at a conference in India, which featured Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia," Raj recalls. "Following his presentation, I asked the audience a simple question: 'Who here is working with wikis in the enterprise?' Only about 5% of hands went up," he says.

If he performed the same ad-hoc poll today, the story would be different, he believes. "The last two to three years has seen a tremendous hype around social software, social networks, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 as buzzwords, which has demanded attention from various departments."

But have Indian companies been able to transform Web 2.0 hype into action, I wonder?

"Most Indian IT companies today are dabbling it. However, they are early in their discovery process and are grappling with typical issues, ranging from technology, to policy, to process," Datta says. In general, he believes, companies are not easily making the shift to a more open, social, collaborative environment - but there is no way to avoid social software as it is fast becoming part of the "natural habitat" for many people who want to share ideas, whether they're at home or at work.

Perhaps it's just not realistic to judge a company's enthusiasm for social networking by whether they're experimenting with it publicly?

At MindTree, for example, internal corporate communications have provided an ideal platform for early experimentations with social networking. Instead of a one-way, 'top-down' approach - where the CEO or other top executive addresses the workforce in the same way that a general might dictate a battle plan to the troops - Web 2.0 creates conversations where communications can flow in multiple directions.

The systems and tools that Raj and his team have built have social features that also allow 'bottom-up' and 'lateral' communications, too, he says. "For example, our Neuron idea management system allows for ideas to percolate upwards in the organisation to the senior-most people, and in parallel, allow for peer-to-peer lateral communications where people can comment on an idea, rate it, build links between ideas and so on," he says. But top-down communication still take place, because senior executives use the system to issue requests for ideas along a particular theme or to solve a specific challenge, he says. Now that's really tapping into 'the wisdom of the crowd'.

Social networking is also key to how MindTree communicates with its clients about the progress of projects. The company's collaborative ProjectSpace portal allows for effective collaboration between project teams, clients and subject-matter experts so that they can track issues, build project-specific knowledge bases in wiki formats, and establish discussion forums for questions and clarifications.

Raj tells me that he and his team are now working on a next-generation system that will allow MindTree to tap into social networks outside of the company - but in a "planned and seamless" manner, of course.

So it seems to me that there's probably a lot going on behind the scenes at outsourcing companies. Just because a provider doesn't have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, that doesn't mean it's not interested in social networking or failing to explore Web 2.0 it in some part of their business.

IT companies - whether they're in India or anywhere else in the world - are by their nature focussed on business-to-business (B2B) communications, not business-to-consumer (B2C). In other words, they're not trying to sell a new chocolate bar, washing detergent or hatchback car to the general public.

For them, the true value of social networking lies in finding better ways to tackle client challenges and track project progress. These are the things that set them apart from their competitors. So internal social networking initiatives are the best way for outsourcing providers to experiment with new tools and approaches, long before they dip their toes into the dangerous waters of public forums.