Social networks will oust email as primary communication tool for companies

According to the forecast made by the research company Gartner 20% of workers will be using social networks as their primary option for business communications by 2014. Gartner says that greater availability of social networking services, along with changing demographics and work styles, are responsible for the business move toward social networking services. And as more workers with social networking skills enter businesses the conventional business tool – email – will be greatly impacted by social media.

"The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, "Email will take on many social attributes, such as contract brokering, while social networks will develop richer email capabilities."

Gartner believes that social networks will be invading corporate email platforms and the hi-tech companies like Microsoft, IBM and others will be adding links to both internal and external socnets inside their email clients and on email servers. Contacts, calendars and tasks will be shared across both email and social networking platforms. Gartner predicts that by 2012 all contact lists, calendar items, and messaging clients on all smartphones will be "socially enabled applications."

Social networking is important to mobile collaboration and mobile collaboration is important to business success in the future.

"The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organizations can either take the lead, or be led by their users," Basso said, speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010 in Cannes, France.