The recent Gilbane report on Collaboration and Social Media-2008 has some interesting statistics. In their research Gilbane looked at medium-sized to very large companies — $25 million or above in revenue and more than 250 employees in size. They picked this size as they felt firms of this size or larger are most likely to be seeking solutions to their communications, collaboration, and information sharing problems. I would agree. Working with the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, headed by Nora Barnes, the survey researchers conducted telephone interviews with 286 respondents in November and December 2007.
Among other things they looked at how people were using social media and how they felt about a number of social media, both channels that might be considered Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. When asked to rate different media as "very effective" - social bookmarking – (46%), mashups (48%), and social networking (59%) achieved the three highest scores of enterprise 2.0 tools , well ahead of blogs, wikis. podcasts, and even RSS. They also added that social bookmarking adoption rates are expected to grow significantly (66%) next year. This is consistent with the Forrester Reports I commented on earlier (see Forrester Predicts a Large Growth in Social Networking Market but How Will Its Integration Occur with the Enterprise?) and more recently (Forrester Reports that Corporate Social Networks will Augment Strategic HR Strategies). I am pleased to see this growing recognition of the value of social bookmarking and social networking within the enterprise.
They conclude their extensive report with the following statement. “Over the next five years, we expect the social media tools and technologies to continue to improve, the domain knowledge to expand, and the methodologies to become more sophisticated. Among the emerging population of digital natives, collaboration skills are well developed and participation in communities is a way of life. All in all, we believe that collaboration and social media will be among the fastest-growing technologies and that the information needs of business people throughout the world will be better served.”
This report is further validation that there is a growing market here. Members of our team were recently at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston where we served as a sponsor. We heard that attendance was double from last year and last year was double the year before. We certainly had a lot of interest in our booth and were glad to attend.
Wow,good!
I love what you wrote.
I think we can make friends.
Posted by: vibram fivefingers | July 07, 2010 at 01:15 AM