Industry news

Social business networks will boom, says Gartner

The business potential of social networks remains untapped, one market analyst claims.

Gartner believes that most users of social networking sites are motivated primarily by personal and entertainment needs rather than business, while their use will become increasingly important to the competitiveness of large enterprises in the future.

Nick Ingelbrecht, research director of the firm, said the technology holds "enormous potential" for improving the management of large enterprises.

"However, 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 on company time," he added.

The analyst surveyed 4,000 people worldwide and found 38 per cent connected to social networking sites via a PC, one per cent via a mobile and eight per cent via both.

Meanwhile, earlier in the month it was reported by ComputerWorld that Microsoft has launched a social networking community for business customers.