According to a new study from IDC, enterprise social networking is growing much faster than expected. With most large organizations still struggling with how to manage social networking within the construct of the traditional enterprise, it is heartening to see such rapid growth in 2007 (191%).
Additional IDC observations from the study include:
- The surfacing of new competitors in the form of established information access and content management vendors that build social features into their solutions.
- As an emergent market, the growth rate is high and spread unevenly between a variety of small vendors and a few larger vendors who represent a relatively large percentage of the market today. While 2007 saw some consolidation, IDC expects that 2008 will see even more.
- There is considerable functional adoption as companies deployed social networking solutions to address a wide variety of specific business challenges spanning HR, marketing/sales, engineering, channel management, and customer service functions.
- The emergence of social intelligence solutions that combine elements of web analytics, brand monitoring, and information access in order to provide management dashboards of social networks both internal and external to corporate firewalls.
- Social networking market growth will be moderated by cultural and resource limitations. Many companies will deploy social networking applications and see few benefits because of the lack of understanding or comfort with the openness required for social networking to be successful.
The use of social networking inside the walls of the enterprise would appear to be a fait accompli. Beyond the challenge of monitoring and regulating employee utilization of the technologies, the value that can be realized in an environment of fragmented media and marketing channels, consumer adoption of social networking applications (blogs, Wikis) and the very real opportunity to use communities to engage and retain customers, is just too robust to ignore.
So, Fortune 1000 enterprises, ignore at your peril.
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