Gartner: Five social software predictions for 2010 and beyond

Gartner has revealed its key predictions on the use of social software and collaboration in the organisation. The predictions focus on offerings ranging from team collaboration to dynamic social networking applications that offer rich profiles and activity streams.

“A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business,” says Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner. “Success in social software and collaboration will be characterised by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business.”

By 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than email for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.

“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities,” said Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner. “While email is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services. “

Gartner recommends that organisations develop a long term strategy for provisioning and consuming a rich set of collaboration and social software services, and develop policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes. Companies should also solicit input from the business community on what collaboration tools would be most helpful.

By 2012, more than 50 per cent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than five percent penetration.

The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organisations to look for an "enterprise Twitter," that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do: to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the organisation. Twitter's scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” says Jeffrey Mann, research vice president for Gartner. “When limited to a single organisation, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream organisations are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”

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