Gartner: Social Networking Services to Replace Email by 2014... Sort of... and Other Social Media Predictions

Clever press release out today from our friends at analyst firm Gartner promoting their upcoming "Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit" with five interesting predictions about social media and social software in the enterprise.

The one that most caught my eye was a prediction that, by 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications... for 20% of business users. By way of explanation, Gartner notes greater access to social networking services in the enterprise, along with organizational culture and demographic shifts will lead 20% of users to make a social network "the hub of their business communications."

I wouldn't dispute that claim. Gartner goes on to note that over the next few years, most companies will either build out their own internal social networks and/or allow business users access to personal social networking accounts. Social networking, they say, "will prove to be more effective than email for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location."

Analyst Matt Cain (who covers email, collaboration and related topics at Gartner) says:

"The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer email capabilities. While email is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sale of premises- and cloud-based social networking services."

Hard to argue with that. For some related commentary, see some of my earlier posts including:

• Facebook Enables Commenting by Replying to Notification Emails: Will this be Exploited to Harvest Email Addresses?
• Should Bosses "Friend" their Employees? Social Media Statistics, Risks and Policy Suggestions
• Facebook Fired: 8% of US Companies Sacked Social Media Miscreants

Amongst Gartner's other predictions for social media:

• By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging (i.e., public services like Twitter), but stand-alone enterprise microblogging (i.e., services like Yammer) will have less than 5 percent penetration.
• Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail. Gartner says that, "Enterprises will need to develop entirely new skill sets around designing and delivering social media solutions. Until this happens, failure rates will remain high. A dearth of methods, technologies and tools will impede the design and delivery of social media solutions in the near term."
• Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications. Gartner explains, "Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm."
• Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity. This one is really interesting as well. Gartner notes that "social network analysis" may be useful for understanding the interaction patterns and information flows among the people and groups working in an organization (in addition to interactions with business partners and customers). But care must be taken to address issues of privacy and confidentiality regarding how such analyses will be used and communicated. "Establishing the ground rules upfront will encourage more open and honest participation and reduce the resistance to ongoing relationship monitoring," they say.

You can read Gartner's entire press release, "Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond" at the following URL:

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114

Update: Analyst Mike Osterman (of Osterman Research fame, follow him on Twitter @mosterman) pointed me toward a similar article he wrote for NetworkWorld way back in July 2008! Worth a read as he has reposted it today. See: "What will truly unified communication be like?" Excerpt:

"Instead of having multiple email addresses, instant messaging handles, phone numbers, etc., each of us would have just a single address – either an email address as we have today or a phone number. To support this, we would have a powerful directory system that would be populated with information on all of our various modes of communication – published and unlisted phone numbers, email addresses, instant messaging handles, etc. – as well as detailed information on our preferred methods of communication based on time of day, day of the week, presence status, travel status and, perhaps, even our current mood based on biometric sensors at our desk or on our mobile device."

Interesting stuff from Mike, as always!