Gartner says firms must be more social

The firm released a report this week in which it said that the business potential of such sites was "largely untapped", and added that they would, " become increasingly important to the competitiveness of large enterprises in the future."

“Social networking software holds enormous potential for improving the management of large companies,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner.

“However, work in this area is still immature and in the meantime companies should be aware of what is happening in the world of consumer social networking and implement appropriate usage policies for employees’ use of services such as Facebook and MySpace on company time.”

The findings come from a survey carried out by the analysts in the latter part of last year, as part of this research project participants were asked to rate how important social networking was to them.

The research showed a " significant aggregate level of interest in the social aspects of communication" .

“Social networking is arguably as old as humanity, not something new that has been invented for so-called ‘digital natives’, said Julia Lin, project manager of research data and analytics at Gartner.

“However, social networking has found new forms of expression on the internet which has helped to reshape the purpose and protocols of social networking in the online world and beyond. How to apply this in a corporate environment will be the next major challenge.”