Business potential of social networking largely untapped, says Gartner

Added by The Editor, 5 months ago.

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Social networking software hold enormous potential for improving communication and collaboration within businesses - but use of such sites as Facebook and MySpace is still largely driven by personal need and entertainment, rather than business objectives.

That's the verdict from IT market research firm Gartner, which recently asked survey respondents to rate how important social networking was for them as a reason for workplace Internet use, alongside 14 other major Internet applications.

Despite the hype surrounding social networking, Internet users generally did not place a high level of importance on social network sites, compared with other mainstream Internet applications such as email and search.

Gartner analysts predict that online social networking will come to be regarded as just the latest expression of a long-standing pattern of human behaviours that involves an increasing range of communications protocols and technologies.

But it is still early days to see how social networkin will fit with more established workplace approaches to communication and collaboration. "Work in this area is still immature and, in the meantime, enterprises should be aware of what is happening in the world of consumer social networking and implement appropriate usage policies for employees' use of services such as Facebook and MySpace on company time," said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner.