I had the chance to chat with Matt Hicks of eWeek for his 29 Dec column: Are Enterprises Ready for Social Networking?

"The hype around social networking is here and the products are ready to launch, but will enterprises be eager to adopt this new technology?

That depends largely on how quickly early-adopter enterprises can begin demonstrating return on investment using the new software and services entering the market, analysts say. The first enterprise target is clear: sales and business-development organizations.

"There's no place more evident than in sales that who you know is more important than what you know," said Stowe Boyd, managing director of consulting company A Working Model, in Reston, Va.

Sales and business-development groups are heavy users of sales force automation systems, which already track ROI and deal flow metrics. Companies who first use social networking in a coordinated way should have little trouble tracking the impact that the technology has on the number of deals or time it takes to make a deal, Boyd said."