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The industry analyst firm IDC is has released a new report that indicates that the enterprise social networking market is ready for ignition and liftoff.

  Blastoff! 
  Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

"The social networking application market was relatively small in 2006, coming in at $46.8 million, a new study published by IDC reports. By 2009, however, this market will grow to $428.3 million creating a new application segment and establishing social networking as a new communications tool used for many purposes other than consumer socializing."

The report continues:

"There are three social networking segments emerging.  These include: self-service applications used by groups and marketing campaign teams; brand applications that focus on persistent customer engagement; and enterprise applications that provide more effective ways of working with customers, partners, and other external parties." (emphasis added)

This is exactly in line with what we've been saying for a while -- once the "ooooh...shiny!" factor wears off of Facebook and the like, application platforms that use social networking for business purposes will become another key part of the enterprise infrastructure.  (In fact, we've even written a whitepaper about this, which is available for download here.)

Hat tip:  Paul Greenberg

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