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Let’s define social networking for those not familiar with it. “Social networking” is a technology-based means of communication utilizing the power and variety of the Internet to provide an infinite variety of tools and offerings

People can leverage these sites to create a sense of presence that even traditional marketing experts can appreciate: brand awareness, lead generation, information sharing and so on. And the real keys to success are the same as in traditional marketing: frequency, relevancy and cross-marketing, to name a few.

Critics claim that social networking is merely a gimmick. In reality, while it is true that social networking alone will not likely produce substantial leads in the absence of other critical methodologies, it IS true that combined with other methods, and when used regularly, social networking can, and has, produced excellent results.

Silverpop's new Share-to-Social feature allows marketers to quickly turn emails into socially-enabled viral messages. With a click, marketers can place links within an email allowing recipients to easily post the message to their profile page on Facebook or MySpace, where friends can see the message, make comments and even post the email on their own profile pages.

One of our emails was posted on 50 different social network profile pages. That kind of customer endorsement turns our email 'push' marketing into a powerful 'pull' campaign."

And Silverpop's enhanced reporting capabilities enable marketers to identify which of their email messages have gone viral, allowing them to track message activity at a granular level and target future messages based on that information.

We don't officially sanction social networking on the job, but we don't really care as long as people are getting their jobs done -- 71 votes, 34.8% My organization bans it, blocking access to IM and sites such as Facebook -- 51 votes, 25% Social media is integral to our business model -- 32 votes, 15.7% We encourage our staff to use social nets to build their professional networks -- 31 votes, 15.2% We discourage it. It's too much of a time waster and a legal risk -- 19 votes, 9.3

Big-screen TV shoppers facing a mystifying array of models and technical jargon now can bring along a friend while shopping at CircuitCity.com. New social networking tools and ratings resources on the site enable visitors to chat with others and review magazine articles rating TVs and other electronics gear.A social media platform from Pluck Corp. also enables visitors to connect online with company product specialists for advice on tricky purchases, such as high-definition TVs, digital cameras and personal computers.

The Wall Street Journal is hoping to gain readers by renovating its Web site to include certain features from social networking sites. In it’s first major revision since 2002, WSJ.com’s new “Journal Community” will allow paid subscribers to create their own profile page with their interests, hobbies and photos.

The site will also be changed so that nonpaying visitors can navigate and identify free, ad-supported content.

Members of the Journal community will be able to comment on stories, create discussion groups and ask for business advice.

NPR also plans to overhaul its Web site and expand the tools for sharing its programs elsewhere over the next few months. And it is working to increase the flexibility of its popular "podcasts," audio downloads that have tripled in usage over the past two years.These digital initiatives are aimed at capturing and retaining audiences _ particularly younger people who aren't habitual radio listeners but who represent the future for fundraising at NPR's member stations.

And for more commercial sites and social networking platforms, delivery of professional content, editing of user generated content and responding to the needs of the users generally involves the employment of staff for those roles. Further, the ongoing bug fixing and continuing development of functional components that improve the accessibility and accuracy of information presented is an ongoing cost - and a large one.

This blurring of business and consumer focused applications is called “consumerization” by technology research firms such as Gartner and executives at companies such as Microsoft. Consumerization posits that consumer technologies — including social networking tools, user generated content and wikis (web-based software that allows people to create content collaboratively) — are being increasingly adopted by corporate America

Experts at Wharton agree that consumer technology has been going corporate in recent years. Underlying this emerging trend are young and tech-savvy workers — called “digital natives”

conundrum to the traditional corporate technology department. Previously, companies dictated what software and hardware were used for work purposes. Today, choosing technology is becoming increasingly democratic as workers get more of a say