tag = "Business"

Mobile concerns are also part of BC/DR planning for most organizations, as 67 percent of executives indicate that wireless network capabilities are part of their business continuity plan. Nearly half, 46 percent, said that mobile devices play a major role in their plan's considerations.

As more companies allow employees to access social networking sites, fears about possible negative ramifications are also growing. Three out of four executives surveyed are concerned about the increased use of social networking capabilities' potential impact on network security. Among respondents, 44 percent allow employees access to such social networking sites. However, just 3 percent cited social networking as the biggest security risk to companies. Hacking continues to be listed as the biggest security risk, with 30 percent of company executives indicating it is their largest concern.

MySpace and Facebook are the two leading mobile social networks, according to ABI Research. Does this present an opportunity for marketers?

Consumers do not want to recreate entirely new and separate social networks for mobile. They would rather tap into their existing social network and have it go with them via the mobile phone.

What About the Business End?

The question not addressed in the survey is how this translates to business use. Some analysts believe internal corporate social networking could catch on in a down economy. LinkedIn, a professional online-networking site, recently launched a service called Company Groups that aims to help companies collaborate.

LinkedIn boasts more than 26 million professionals representing millions of companies. Social networking through Company Groups can serve as an e-mail replacement that enables communication among groups, which is often problematic in an e-mail context, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.

"People in their personal lives used Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn, and are very familiar with these tools. So it makes a lot of sense to import or build a parallel universe where people can do these same sorts of things within their organization to facilitate communication," Sterling said. "Social networking can be a utility for getting information and accomplishing tasks. Those kinds of things are what you would expect to see emphasized in a corporate environment."

Social networking has become widely adopted in the consumer and personal market place, but has not gotten the anticipated traction in the business world. I've been mulling over this market dilemma for a long time and have developed some ideas to explain the lagging business adoption. For clarity, social networking is defined as the bundling of all of the components of communication: wikis, blogs, podcasts, video, content development tools (document and presentation development, and spreadsheet functionality), instant messaging and email. I'd be interested in getting your feedback on these ideas, as well as your thoughts on why we are seeing such a slow adoption of social networking within the business community.