Facebook, Twitter Trigger Enterprise Social Software Use

Indeed, companies with broad social networking platforms, such as IBM, Socialtext and Mindtouch, have added their own Twitter pixie dust into their suites. That is to say, these companies long ago realized they needed to make microblogging an intrinsic part of their platforms, providing security the public-facing Twitter can't.

Gartner provided a sobering thought: Whether companies add microblogging tools or comprehensive social software suites such as IBM's Lotus Connections, more than 70 percent of social media plans facilitated by IT departments will fail through 2012.

These plans need to be driven by business managers, with enterprises cultivating new skill sets developed around social media software. Until this happens, failure rates will remain high.

In another prediction, Gartner said only 25 percent of enterprises will use social network analysis to improve performance and productivity of their social media solutions. Social network analysis, a sort of business intelligence for social software, is being adopted by some businesses.

Jive Software acquired Filtrbox to gain these insight technologies, while Socialcast, Attensity and others are offering social BI. IBM is integrating business intelligence from its Cognos platform into Lotus Connections, a combination that will form the core of its Project Vulcan effort.

But Gartner believes that users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses to surveys because they may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. "For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations," Gartner said.

Finally, some good news for people who use smartphones for work: Using newfangled collaboration apps should be second nature. Gartner said 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from collaboration applications built for smartphones.

With 3 billion phones in the world, some users will grow up using their iPhones or Android devices to communicate or collaborate with friends and colleagues. This means with such devices people will be better equipped to handle conversations within a given amount of time than with their PCs simply because they are easier to use.