"Firms 'miss' social site success"

A piece on the BBC today reports that uber analyst consultancy Gatner has come to the conclusion that businesses are missing a trick by not embracing social networking. They spoke to businesses in 18 countries and found out that “38% of more than 4,000 PC and mobile phone users connect to sites like MySpace and Facebook via PCs.”

Although conceding that many businesses might be sceptical of the benefits, Mr Mann, Gartner’s Vice President of research said:

“…you have to look deeper as to why these people are using these networks. It’s to keep up with their friends, to mobilise them, to get involved in everything from politics to cleaning the local park. If you look at those reasons, then there are a lot of business counterparts.”

“It can lead to better productivity if you can mobilise your people quickly through social networking.

“For example our press agency uses Twitter and FriendFeed to do things like find someone to talk to a reporter. With these networks you can find out who is online and get answers quickly. It’s about keeping distributed groups in touch and up to date.”

Anyone who works in the online pr / new media space won’t be in the least bit surprised by Gartner’s view. It’s a shame they couldn’t come up with more hard research to back the case, although I guess many of the benefits are softer and difficult to quantify.

For me, tools like Twitter are more appropriate for business than social use anyway and I’ve been using Linked in as a sort of CRM system for the past couple of months - the business case for social networking is out there, but just needs a bit more evidence to convince the naysayers.