Companies use networking to their advantage

BEIJING - Emma Tang spent five hours of her work time on Monday surfing Kaixin001.com, a popular social networking site (SNS) in China. Her actions would normally be considered quite bold since most employees are officially forbidden from browsing social networking sites during work.

Fortunately for Tang, she gets paid to browse social networking sites as part of her job at Vivaki, the digital arm of Publicis Groupe, the world's fourth-largest media agency.

"We are trying to ensure our staff are involved as much as possible with social media each day to see what happens there," David Kenny, managing partner of Vivaki, told China Daily while in Beijing for Vivaki's global board meeting this month.