InformationWeek Analytics New Research Finds Nearly 90% of Companies Have Some Form of Social Networking in Place...

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- InformationWeek Analytics, the leading service for peer-based IT research and analysis, today announced the release of its latest research report; Socially Challenged? Make Your Enterprise Social Networking Efforts Pay Off explores why, at a time when everyone seems to be friending, tweeting and linking, the vast majority of the 700+ companies we polled can't get their employees to use social networking tools for the benefit of the business. The report author, Mike Healey, is president of Yeoman Technology Group.

Research Summary:

Nearly 90% of companies have some sort of social networking in place, according to InformationWeek Analytics' recent Social Networking in the Enterprise Survey, yet attempts to get employees to blog, use wikis, participate in discussion forums or take advantage of full-scale enterprise social networks largely fail. Lack of single sign-on, integration with e-mail, tracking of user activity and connection to external social nets are key factors that keep employees from embracing internal social nets.

Findings:

• The most used function of enterprise social networking is the online directory with Facebook-style profiles (22% of survey respondents report heavy use), followed by team or company wikis (13%), company discussion forums (7%) and internal blogs (5%).
• One-third of companies surveyed don't provide employees with single sign-on to their internal systems.
• 39% of respondent don't offer any type of e-mail integration with their internal social networks.
• Only 8% of companies approach their social networking initiatives with a coordinated team from multiple disciples; most efforts are led by marketing.
• Microsoft's SharePoint is the leading enterprise social networking system, with 71% of the market; Google's sites and IBM's Lotus are the only other platforms with a sizable base.

For full access to the research data, members can download now:

http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/10/4754/Messaging-Collaboration/research-social-networking.html

"It seems ironic that people are so enamored of social networking in their personal lives yet so resistant to using it at work," says Lorna Garey, content director of InformationWeek Analytics. "But the reality is that, if we want people to use social networking tools to achieve business goals, we have to simplify the experience for them. Things like single sign-on and integration with e-mail would go a long way."

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