The majority of users of
social networking Web sites are motivated mainly by personal
needs and a desire for entertainment, rather than business and
practical objectives, according to a recent survey by
Gartner.
The market analyst found that even though their business
potential remains largely untapped,
social networking Web sites will become increasingly important to
the competitiveness of large enterprises in the future.
“Social networking software holds enormous potential for improving
the management of large enterprises,” explained Nick Ingelbrecht,
research director at Gartner. “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 such as Facebook and MySpace on company time.”
Respondents were asked to rate how important social networking was
for them as a reason for using the Internet along with 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 e-mail and search.
Gartner predicts 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.
“Social networking is arguably as old as humanity, not something
new that has been invented for so-called ‘digital natives’, said
Julia Lin, project manager of research data and analytics at
Gartner. “However, social networking has found new forms of
expression on the Internet which has helped to reshape the purpose
and protocols of social networking in the online world and beyond.
How to apply this in a corporate environment will be the next major
challenge.”