According to a study by a research firm, use of social media in business will continue to increase.

According to the predictions made by IT research firm Gartner, one out of every five businesses worldwide will use social networking sites for interpersonal communications.  In the last few years social media have overtaken email as the primary tool used for communication online. According to the same firm, half of all the companies in the world will start using Twitter and other social networking sites within the next couple of years. According to the report many corporations want to make use of services like Twitter but they are looking for enterprise-type services that really provide the same functionalities of Twitter but with greater control and security.  Companies want the same type of service which employees can use internally for communicating.  Twitter-type messaging services allow employees to find one another quickly, be updated in projects, other uses that can be helpful in collaboration within the company.

But even if companies want enterprise services that are similar to twitter, it is the widespread adoption of Twitter that has made it a really effective tool for communication. According to Jeffrey Mann, the research vice-president for Gartner “It will be very difficult for microblogging as a standalone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter's scale is one of the reasons for its popularity. When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”

Gartner also predicts that email will develop to have more social media functionalities while social networks will develop greater e-mail capabilities.

These findings are hardly mind-blowing as people really expect greater use of social media in the coming years.  But formal studies by research firms can really help a great deal in convincing companies about the popularity and the significance of social media in doing business.

For companies that want to take advantage of social media but do not know how they can possibly take full advantage of them there are online companies like CatchFriday which can help.  CatchFriday is a virtual assistance company based in the UK but with workers based in Asia. The company can help companies take advantage of social media for business.

Visit our virtual personal assistant sponsor: www.catchfriday.com

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