We’ve already shared some stats around companies that choose to  block access to these sites. For example, Robert Half Technology found that 54% of CIOs said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work.

The naysayers will point out that giving employees access will hurt productivity,  expose sensitive information,  hurt the brand’s reputation or  cause compliance issues. The reality is that these are all just excuses. There are always risks with any decision and in this case businesses have to make their own assessment and then take steps to mitigate that risk.

My request is that you keep an open mind before jumping to a conclusion. To help you along let’s review reasons you WOULD want to open access to social networking sites:

1. They offer a great channel to recruit new talent
2. It is a unique way to build your brand in the eyes of customers and prospects
3. Go where customers are – let them communicate with you on their terms
4. Drive new sales and upgrades
5. Find new prospects
6. Drive traffic to your site
7. Reduce your customer service costs
8. Improve productivity (yes you read this right – look for proof below)
9. Collaborate with partners, customers and employees
10. Increase your reach by tapping the collective networks of your employees. In other words grow your enterprise social graph

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at some other research that points to the benefits of opening access.

• According to Dr Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at University of Melbourne in Australia, workers who engage in “Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing” are 9% more productive than those who don’t.
• An Accenture survey of Millennial preferences found that they prefer to communicate via instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and RSS feeds. One Millennial MBA, points out that, “I need to access my Facebook in order to do my job.”
• The Cerner Corporation has found tremendous benefits from opening access to social networks. Here is how one Cerner associate puts it “Cerner supports the notion that “work time” and “personal time” have blurred in the uber-connected world. We used Twitter to gather real-time feedback during our corporate town hall in October. It was amazing to see a meeting of 5,000 associates be steered by the crowd, channeled via social media.”

Is there a social media silver bullet? No. But are you missing out on a great opportunity if you don’t engage and don’t enable your employees? Absolutely.

I won’t analyze every prediction but rather focus on the ones that really caught my eye and will probably surprise most of our readers.

Prediction #1
“By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.”

Today MySpace is the 4^th largest email provider beating out both Yahoo and Gmail. And Facebook recently announced a full-fledged email service, which will instantly make it the largest email provider in the world once launched.

“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities,” said Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner

My complaint with all the great social tools at my disposal is that they all live on different sites. Will there ever be one site to rule them all? I doubt it. But some are going to get very close. Facebook is going to have all of my friends, my live feeds, my photos, my chat client and soon email.

What will all this mean for your business? If you haven’t embraced social networking you need to start immediately. Otherwise you risk missing out on future sales, productivity improvements and valuable connections that can help drive your business forward.

Prediction #2
“By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.”

The growth of Twitter has caused many vendors and enterprises to take notice. As more and more people consume information in 140 character bytes there is a natural desire to bring this capability in house. However, the idea that “Twitter-like” functionality will see the same success is a little mis-guided. A key part of Twitter’s success is the size of their network. With a small, enterprise focused network and the fact that the service will be purely business focused it will be challenging to get employees to adopt the replica vs. just using what they know and love, Twitter.

Prediction #3
“Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.”

Just as social software is causing the enterprise to reinvent how they work it is also disrupting the way IT departments operate. Business users are testing, using and adopting solutions with or without the help of IT.  The most successful IT groups will be those that partner with the business to better understand their needs and find ways to deliver solutions on their timelines. With so much of today’s software just a few mouse clicks away, all hosted in the cloud and managed off site there is almost no barrier to the business making their own decisions on what is best for them and their business process.

What do you think? Are you surprised by these predictions?

Social networking still tops the list
The report found that the one piece of social technology most familiar to the Inc. 500 was social networks with 75% claiming they are “very familiar” compared to 57% in 2008.  Perhaps even more interesting is that Twitter’s familiarity is already at 62% across these organizations.

Some popular technologies are slowing

While social networks are on the rise other technologies are slowing.  Specifically, the use of message boards, video, wikis and podcasting are all leveling off or even declining.  And back to Twitter, the report found that an astonishing “52% of these companies are already using it for their business”.

Social is here to stay, now what about brand protection

In 2009, 91% of the Inc. 500 were using at least one social media tool (up from 77% in 2008).  Now the Inc. 500 companies are turning their focus to legal and brand protection strategies with 36% having implementing a formal policy for their employees. The question remains, is a policy enough?  Other studies have shown that a policy alone won’t change an employee’s behavior online. The point being companies must have an integrated plan on engaging with social.  It requires a combination of policy, education and technology (download our whitepaper to learn more about an integrated approach to engaging with social)

B2B communication and collaboration

A new question in this year’s report centered around the use of social tools to communicate and collaborate with the extended enterprise (vendors, suppliers and partners).  Once again social networking is at the top of the list with 34% reporting that they use these tools to communicate outside the enterprise.  Twitter is a close second with 26% reporting that Twitter is an “appropriate vehicle for B2B communications”.  This could be a sign of things to come.

It also begs the question, if companies are going to adopt Twitter for B2B communication and collaboration how long before enterprises start using these platforms for internal collaboration.  At Socialware we think it is going to be sooner than anyone thinks – once you adopt Social Middleware to provide enterprise-grade security, privacy and retention on top of these open tools a whole new world opens up for the enterprise.  Stay tuned for more on this front.