14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like social media use is not only going up for individual users, social tools are also becoming a lot more popular in enterprises, this despite social networks being blocked in a large number of them. A new report from Palo Alto Networks, maker of enterprise firewall solutions, found that Twitter use grew two and a half times from just six months ago.
The report looks at various tools for the so-called Enterprise 2.0. It found that the most popular tool was instant messaging which was being used by 52 percent of enterprises. Interestingly, it's Facebook chat that was the fourth most popular IM service used ahead of offerings from Yahoo or AOL. Webmail takes the second spot with a surprisingly high 35 percent, showing that companies are more opened to cloud-based solutions. But coming in third place are social networking tools which are used by 27 percent of the companies for business purposes.
Of the social networks, Twitter has seen the biggest rise. Though labeled as an instant messenger for some reason in the report, the time spent on the microblogging platform grew 252 percent since last spring. It also became widely used being present in some 89 percent of enterprises, up from just 35 percent. In addition, Facebook is seeing some solid growth being detected in 94 percent of the companies, up from 37 percent six months ago. LinkedIn, a social network dedicated to professionals, on the other hand, was only present in 89 percent of the cases, up from 35 percent.
An interesting find, though, had to do with the office and collaboration tools the employees use and it should give Google execs plenty to smile about. The report found that Google Docs was used in 82 percent of the companies compared to just 33 percent in spring. It's enough that one employee use it to be counted so it doesn't exactly mean that it's replacing Microsoft Office any time soon, but the fact that more employees are trying it could mean more enterprises signing up for Google Apps services in the future.