Should technology vendors be social media activists?

This little lot all have a profile on my social network Talent Cloud yet not one of them is really doing very much with social media.

I thought at least one would have a Twitter account.  Only 2 have a blog; I could go on!  A small UK vendor Advorto are a lot more proactive in the social media space and to be fair so are Pageuppeople (Australian, the country behind us in the medals table, new to the UK) so some are of course starting to get the point.  But even on Talent Cloud, where they have a small but growing captive audience the ATS vendors do very, very little to warrant their membership; even though some have had direct sales leads from the site.

So, why should they be thinking about social media?  Well, Taleo do a lot of marketing around their Facebook app and generally how social media is a key part of your recruitment strategy so they clearly get it.  Being the biggest vendor, and in the UK one of the fastest growing, if I were a competitor of Taleo I would be looking for every advantage I could get to generate sales.  Also, a lot of corporates have Twitter profiles (for example) and some tech vendors such as SAP and Oracle.  But there are many other aspects of social media that the ATS vendors are no doubt ignoring leaving more for everyone else.  Bottom line, I don't think they really see it is a short term gain so leave it until tomorrow.

Happy to be told otherwise; feel free to comment!