My company has it's own internal messageing service. However, I do know of HR professionals from other companies that use MSN and they are able to talk directly with suppliers. I think if you are wasting your time chatting on MSN to friends, then you obviously don't have enough work to do, and that is going to show. China is no longer the State Owned Enterprise model of thousands of workers hiding with the masses. KPIs and goal setting has changed that.

I am a middle manager in a small (30 employees) Chinese/Singaporean web 2.0 startup.

We use QQ to communicate internally and I am a strong supporter of most of our usage - we transfer files, _link_s to media and screenshots effortlessly. We easily conduct group conversations and communications. For most of us QQ is a huge time saver.

On the other hand, we have a few employees - the people who "drink tea and wait to be told to do something" who use QQ in their "spare time" to chat with their friends. The issue is that with tight deadlines and a start-up workload, they really shouldn't have any spare time at all. They should be writing blog posts, making phone calls, etc. If they do have free time, they should be using it to catch up on industry news, follow trends and figure out how we can capitalize on them.