After a World Economic Forum meeting in Vienna I was at dinner with a number of senior executives of well known European companies this week when the subject of social media was raised as a discussion point. The WEF was wondering how companies use social media and what was their attitude to it?

As the majority of senior execs tend to be 40+ the were few active Facebook or Twitter users around the table However many of their companies now have mandatory social media training, which seems to mainly involve making employees aware that they shouldn’t use it to criticise the company as they may be monitored and subsequenty fired! Most organisations also have strict rules on who is allowed to Tweet. But the disconnect between large companies and social media seemed almost as pronounced as in the governments affected by the ‘Arab Spring’ – while they are aware of its existence, nobody quite knows how ornwhat to use it for. Some of us will recall simlilar remarks being made about the PC and the Inernet.

The biggest fear among corporations is of damage to their reputation, as a slur with no factual basis may spread through social media and influence public perception. In some cases, all people may know about a particular industry can come from social media in the form of a viral video produced by someone with an axe to grind.

So what should the response be, to live with it or to be more proactive? For a large number of companies there is a growing pressure to use social media even though the end result may be just shouting into the wind. What can a large chemical company, or in fact any other B2B company tweet about? They already have channels of comunication to their customers in the form of web sites, mailing lists and catalogues, so the benefits of tweeting are less clear. But the number of investors and board members asking what the company’s social media strategy is has led to a plethora of company twitter accounts broadcasting nothing but bland corporate speak.

All of this perhaps misses the point of social media, where the key element is people not organisations. The most followed social media users have always been individuals, whether Belle du Jour or @2020science, and as any journalist will testify, it’s the human angle that makes a story interesting.

Real CEOs don’t tweet (although some have a corporate communications person to do it on their behalf) simply because it is too risky. An ill guarded comment after too much Moutai or Wuliangye at a Chinese banquet might get an employee fired, but if it came from a senior executive it could wipe millions off a company’s value (and get them fired).

The big opportunity for social media isn’t in pumping out bland corporate statements, its biggest effect will be inside corporations, allowing discussions around the water cooler to be expanded to include relevant people across the whole organisation, tapping existing knowledge and reducing duplication of effort. The beauty of social media compared with other collaborative platforms from Lotus Notes through Microsoft Sharepoint to Dropbox is the lack of user intervention required. Social media platforms push information rather than relying on users to remember to check for the updated information.

As a tool for collaboration, whether company wide or in the academic world, we are at the beginning of a shift just as profound as that caused by the World Wide Web. But with all new platforms, it takes a few years of use and misuse before the really useful applications emerge that companies can really make use of to improve competitiveness.

The recent news about the debt problems in Dubai contrast with the glitzy no expense spared hotels and conference centres where I spent last weekend with the World Economic Forum, but probably do more to highlight the importance of a diverse technology enabled economy than any amount of lobbying we could do.

While Dubai has led the way for the emergence of the Gulf as a major economic centre, most of my technology work has been done in the neighbouring states, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia who, while perhaps being slightly envious of Dubai’s dash to pre eminence in the region with the worlds tallest tower and an indoor ski slope have been taking a more measured approach to development. Most of these countries have been playing the property game too, but also backing this up with major investments in science and technology, and that doesn’t just mean taking stakes in AMD or IBM but making sure that technology fits into the local economy.

The reasons to do this are all the more obvious this week, and in a region with tiny but fast expending populations, ensuring that jobs are created for locals rather than overseas labourers is of increasing importance. It is estimated that Saudi Arabia has 25% youth unemployment, and in a country where 40% of the population is under 15 the petrochemical industry isn’t going to provide all the jobs that will be needed to prevent social unrest.

What is? Increasing the size of the manufacturing sector is a key policy goal in many states, and Mubadala, one of Abu Dhabi’s investment agencies has already announced plans to build an AMD fab in the emirate but this is only the start. The longer term goal, and the financial and political situation in many of the the Gulf states allows the luxury of long term planning, is to develop new technology based industries in materials, aerospace, semiconductors, renewable energy and pharmaceuticals but based on a whole host of new and emerging technologies such as nanotech, industrial biotech and regenerative medicine.

While Dubai may in the eye of a storm right now, the longer term prospects for the region look as bright as the desert sun.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

I’ll be back in Dubai next week for what is describes as the “World’s Largest Brainstorming”