A mythic new species has invaded the workplace, wreaking havoc in boardrooms and striking terror across IT departments. Dubbed ‘the millennials’, these are the self- assured creatures who were born after 1980 with the internet hard- wired into their psyches. Allergic to boredom, these multi-taskers seek out flexibility in their schedules and a balanced life away from the office. For them, informal communication with their peers is a habitual necessity. They are the anointed spearhead of the ‘consumerisation of IT’, that much-discussed phenomenon which has seen all manner of bring- your-own mobile devices and rogue applications infect the corporate arena in viral ways – often without the approval of security-obsessed managers.

In reality, however, fluid work practices and disruptive technologies are being adopted, even demanded, by workers of all ages. It turns out that there is no cross-generational divide to cross, merely differences in mindset between organisations when it comes to defining business boundaries and using social tools to enhance performance. “The millennial argument is BS for the most part,” agrees Sameer Patel, a managing partner at San Francisco-based collaboration consultancy, The Sovos Group. “The notion that boomers and other older generations need to be cradled and their hands held through this change is not something I believe.”

Global research findings back up Patel’s assertion. In its latest quarterly Mobile Workforce Report, broadband provider iPass found that the median age of the itinerant, constantly connected worker is actually 46. “This tech chasm is more like a crack in the pavement,” concludes iPass. “Overall mobile-worker preferences and behavioral characteristics across all age groups were similar – apart from the younger generation’s loss of mobile devices in the back of late-night taxis or, dare we say it, in bars.”

If anything, older workers are the ones leading the charge into web-based crowdsourcing, free-floating office spaces and virtual teamwork. A new Forrester study commissioned by Citrix Online asked information workers of all ages in the US, the UK, France, Germany and Australia about their business communication habits. The results show that millennials are considerably less likely to share work-related information via text messages or use video conferencing, web chat and social-networking tools in the workplace than those aged 55 and over. And these same ‘boomers’ increased their business use of social media by as much as 79% in the past year.

Citrix Online president Brett Caine says some of these counter-intuitive findings may be due to older generations using the tools more for work than leisure and having the stature and time to use them more freely. But whatever the reasons, the potential benefits of this sea change are enormous.

Extreme expressions of this so-called workshifting revolution are ‘just-in-time’ companies that scale up and down at will, hiring workers on demand and plucking project-specific applications out of the air. Even now GigaOM Pro analyst JP Finnell points to a flurry of “high-impact collaboration tools” that have arisen from the convergence of cloud computing, social software and the ubiquity of mobile technology, as well as a new generation of empowered employees and partners working inside and outside the corporate firewall in “the human cloud”. If all those who could work away from the office spent even half their time doing so, Telework Research Network predicts that businesses would save more than $400bn (€300bn) a year in increased output, lower office costs, reduced absenteeism and lower staff turnover. And that’s just in the US, where an estimated 40% of all jobs today could be done at home.

In fact, companies may have little choice but to embrace the concept of the contingent workplace if they are to attract and retain the best talent. Data released in Cisco’s new Connected World report suggests that fully two-thirds of workers would prefer the option of flexible working to a higher salary. And the more they work at home, with all those consumer-friendly apps, the more they demand the same Ikea-like minimalism in the office. “What’s happening is the next generation of users have grown up on these tools, they’ve grown up in the cloud and they aren’t likely to tolerate a bad experience,” says Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management at Google.

Add in the environmental benefits of less air travel and a reduced carbon dioxide footprint from relying on lightweight cloud-fed terminals – as opposed to an arsenal of heavy-duty desktops and data-storage servers that are some of the biggest consumers of energy – and the surprise is quite how slowly this human cloud is gathering. For all the long-term returns on investment, productivity remains too nebulous a concept.

Speaking at GigaOM’s seminal Net:Work conference in December, David Coleman, the managing director at Collaborative Strategies, said: “I was talking to a big client recently and what surprised me was not the extent of their external collaborations with customers and suppliers, but how much their internal collaboration process was in disarray. There was no strategy to it, no coordination and in some cases, not very much communication.”

There are 2,000 vendors to choose from when it comes to collaboration tools, and yet small and medium-sized businesses in particular are wary of jumping in without tangible evidence of their usefulness. Cloud-based IT is demonstrably cheaper than relying on packaged bundles of software that come bloated with superfluous features and then require expensive upgrades, not to mention constant in-house maintenance. But only 7% of companies, says IDC, currently entrust their data and software needs to third-party cloud platforms such as those provided by Google or Salesforce.com. Paranoia over compliance issues and information leaks means such innovations still have all the radioactive appeal of a mushroom cloud.

As the following pages will show, there are several reasons preventing more companies from making cost- efficient use of distributed workforces, collaboration tools and on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

The revolutionary practices starting to percolate among forward-thinking businesses will not gain widespread acceptance until basic managerial issues are addressed. Trust, transparency and talent – rather than technology – are the critical concerns in a cloud-based world.

It all boils down to people and how they can be connected in meaningful ways that mimic real-life interactions and behavioural motivation. Although self-evident now in the Facebook era, this social element was somehow overlooked in previous attempts to unleash corporate potential. As was simplicity itself. Portal-style intranets, extranets and in-house search engines simply lacked an addictive human dimension and with it any chance of gaining traction.

“We have finally started to really integrate people,” Patel told Net:Work. “People are the best filters. They know what the best content is and where to find the best data. They are the glue. Our entire knowledge economy is based on something that has existed in society for generations and now we’ve brought it to work. What shocks me is that it took this long.”

COLLABORATION STATIONS

As one of the acknowledged rising stars of global outsourcing, Nagarro is emblematic of the 21st-century service provider and all the associated problems of working across multiple time zones and innumerable software platforms. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, but with much of its coding and engineering horsepower emanating out of Gurgaon, just south of Delhi, Nagarro tackles intricate software projects for companies of all sizes and skillsets in the US and Europe. To add to the complexity, these clients span several specialised industries including pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and finance.

Nagarro’s trick to making this all hum is picking the right time for globe-spanning conference calls – 9am in New York is one of its favourites – and adapting itself as much as possible to the clients’ existing systems for collaborating. It also throws in its own web-based projects management dashboard, known as Projistics, free of charge.

“There is still a big learning curve. We find that many people are not used to sharing their documents,” says Nagarro president Vishal Gauri. “We try to pick tools that customers already have. Often times, we also recommend others such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. In some cases, for large projects involving big teams, we will share the cost of installing high- end video-conferencing equipment. Face-to-face dialogue makes a big difference.”

Most initial knowledge-sharing software and free collaboration tools were derived from popular consumer metaphors, be it Wikis, Facebook pages or Twitter microblogs. Now technologists are looking at applying business-driven human-centric design principles in an effort to make the technology more invisible and tools more directly relevant to a fired-up workplace. The guiding principle is making sure employees don’t abandon them in the face of information overload and return to their old work ways and comfort zones.

Various solutions have emerged to avoid such worker revolts. With email so often cited as the key time-wasting culprit, Google has just introduced a priority inbox for Gmail with the aim of reducing workplace noise through filters that anticipate what users want. Xobni performs similar wonders on Outlook; it is also one of several applications that work seamlessly with the online workspaces created by UK-based Huddle as more and more software start-ups realise the virtues of open standards and interoperability. No employee wants the hassle of learning another set of operating protocols, far less deal with anything but the most intuitive interface. Dave Hersh, chairman of social business software company Jive, goes so far as to suggest companies include a chief experience officer. “We need people who can protect against feature creep and preserve the user experience.”

Design firm IDEO teamed up social enterprise company Moxie Software to create a knowledge-sharing network called Spaces. The customisable platform is designed to mould around existing workflow systems and legacy data sources rather than impose another alien process upon them. Like so many social games and location-based apps, Spaces rewards participation – a social-engagement tactic that has proven effective in converting workers to rival collaborative platforms as well. Spaces is also based around “rich profiles” of users in the belief that knowledge exchange comes from shared connections rather than shared pools of data. “These enterprises want to know how they can truly connect people around the world,” explains Moxie CEO Tom Kelly. “At one very large company that we are dealing with right now, a very insightful person said: ‘I want a product that will make us small again. So I know who’s doing what across the room like I did when we started.’”

THE NETWORKED WORKER

Companies that rely on elastic workforces tend to enthuse about the increased levels of motivation and productivity. Surveying their 2.5 million users, iPass found that mobile employees work as much as 240 extra hours per year compared with their office-based peers. Only 6% of them disconnect from work while on holiday. “It is noticeable how passionate people are when they work on their own terms,” says Maynard Webb, CEO of virtual call-centre company LiveOps. “Our contractors are often more connected and happy than the people who are in the corporate office.”

Yet even evangelists like Webb talk about the urgent need to improve the feeling of trust between companies and their remote staff . Bound to management tradition, employers continue to be overly paternalistic, monitoring their invisible teams as opposed to fostering better communication with them. Deprived of regular visual contact and other bonding mechanisms, workers often find it difficult to buy into their paymasters’ decision making, let alone contribute their own ideas for improvement. The same can also be said for in-house staff , particularly as companies grow in size.

Among those determined to rejuvenate that relationship is Marc Benioff, chief of Salesforce.com, the cloud-computing juggernaut that boasts its own enterprise networking product known as Chatter. Realizing that his business is propelled by employees at all levels of the operation, Benioff has set about obliterating his internal hierarchies and even compensating staff based in part on contributions to, and measurable influence on, Chatter.

“It’s about values and the number-one value is trust,” he told Net:Work. “If there is no trust between employees and managers, nothing is going to work. Transparency builds trust. To get trust alignments, you have to have massive communication, you have to open up everything.”

Applying that philosophy to what would normally have been a closed-door off-site three-day meeting of 250 executives, he distributed iPads to everyone in the room and encouraged all to comment in real-time. He also solicited input from right across his 4,000-strong workforce. As Benioff observes, such empowerment initiatives can yield unexpected changes: “Your own business starts tweeting you.”

THE REMOTE MANAGER

Agility is not just a watchword for companies these days. It’s the new mantra for software development and web-design projects. In contrast to the classically linear approach of the past, where projects were mapped out, executed and tested in a laboriously sequential approach, ‘agile development’ puts all the emphasis on constant collaboration and on-the-fly changes.

The end result is typically cheaper, faster and more responsive to market shifts, with incremental versions of working software delivered on a frequent rotation. But making this iterative method work is no easy matter. The evolutionary approach depends heavily on face-to-face conversations rather than elaborate documentation, not to mention an effective managerial framework. No wonder video conferencing has become a new necessity in a corporate world increasingly dictated by software projects.

More and more workers are using their computers for quick Skype-style exchanges, particularly if visual chat applications come ready-baked into their email or project-management systems.

A growing few are also booking time in video- conferencing suites for virtual meetings conducted in high definition, a luxury that is becoming more and more affordable by the month.

“When I need to see the sweat on someone’s brow I will use TelePresence. But other times I just need to know to see that someone is paying attention,” says Tom Pate, an executive director at Accenture, the management-consultancy giant. Pate reckons his company-wide commitment to such collaboration tools has been a critical factor in doubling sales over the past decade even as back-office operation costs were slashed in half as a result of cuts.

Cisco, the company behind those expensive TelePresence systems, says it has seen savings of close to $1bn (€750m) in the past three years from its own internal use of the high-end video- conferencing system. Three-quarters of that is attributable to reductions in travel expenses, the rest in improved productivity. And nothing spreads adoption of new workflow practices quite like financial results. Says Cisco’s chief information officer, Rebecca Jacoby: “If you can make a concrete example of how collaboration brought value in one specific area of your business, you will be amazed at how easy it is to sell to rest of the company.”

SEARCH FOR A STAR

In this elastic new world of business, it’s not uncommon to see both Google and Goldman Sachs chase after the same talent. So competitive has the hunt for the next generation of business stars become that Nagarro, on the prowl for 2,000 new workers over the next three years, feels compelled not only to tap into India’s famed coaching institutes but to start nurturing budding computer- science and engineering standouts from high schools in northern India. Once recruited, every effort is made to keep them. Among the innovations, says Nagarro’s Gauri, is a web-based ‘issue tracker’, an HR help system that seeks to resolve work problems well before they have time to fester. It’s cited as a key factor in keeping Nagarro’s attrition rates at an impressive 5%.

But what exactly is everyone looking for in terms of skillsets? “Learning agility,” says Al Delattre, global market managing director for technology at headhunting giants Korn/Ferry International. And for that, past performance is no longer a helpful indicator. “The leaders of the future are probably no longer the people who got the rotation through finance, engineering and sales or had the highest grades in business school. They’re going to be the people most able to quickly recognise, adapt to, exploit and execute against these new waves of technology. The leaders of tomorrow are going to be those who adapt and learn.”

A similar observation was made at Net:Work by John Seely Brown of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge. “Our skills don’t last more than five years. And yet we use the eyeglasses of yesterday to make sense of what’s happening today. In fact one might argue that even using the term ‘skills’ is a 20th-century notion. Because if basically the half-life of skills is shrinking and shrinking, then what may matter more than ever is disposition.”

If true, game-addicted millennials may hold the keys after all, but in ways they never expected. The two critical dispositions “for thriving on the future’s edge”, claims Seely Brown, are the same ones required to be successful in the game world: inclinations for questing and for connecting. “Those dispositions will always be in play. It is not a skill but a point of view. In the game world, if it ain’t changing, I’m outta there. If I ain’t learning, I’m out.”

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

Banker and philanthropist John Studzinski tells David Ryan why youth employment is this decade’s timebomb.

The contained, softly spoken man across the table looks worried. He’s been talking to the young homeless, working with ex- servicemen, helping former convicts to reintegrate into society and fielding questions from students who fret about the state of the jobs market. If action isn’t taken soon to bolster youth employment, he says, the world will have “a lost generation” on its hands. In a drabber setting, he could easily be mistaken for a social worker.

But these are the plush Mayfair offices of private-equity giant Blackstone and the concerned citizen in question is senior managing director John Studzinski, one of the best-known bankers in London.

Studzinski, known as ‘Studz’, is a 54-year-old Polish-American, formerly of HSBC and Morgan Stanley, who gives millions – about half his pay, reportedly – to good causes. A pillar of the Roman Catholic community, he introduced Diana, Princess of Wales, to the West End’s rough sleepers and pours much of his energy into his employer’s charitable body, the Blackstone Foundation. Today, however, he’s issuing “a call to action”. It’s time for business to think proactively about hiring 15 to 24-year-olds, he warns – otherwise, the consequences could be frightening.

In Britain, he notes, you can find households “where you have two or three generations living under the same roof who are state-dependent”. In Spain, youth unemployment stands at a staggering 42%. “That’s a dangerously high number. There are other countries, such as in the Mideast, that also have high youth unemployment, creating a sense of disenfranchisement.”

Eerily, within days of this interview, a wave of protest spread across the Middle East and North Africa as millions were emboldened by Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s toppling. As citizens vented their frustrations, the same list of grievances emerged: the corruption, the cronyism, the authoritarianism of governments – and, above all, the scourge of youth unemployment.

Indeed the whole Jasmine Revolution was sparked by the death of one young man: a 26-year-old jobless Tunisian graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself ablaze after police shut down his fruit and vegetable stall for want of an official permit. In Tunisia, 65% of the population is under 25, with a high level of education and internet literacy, and it’s a similar story throughout the region.

Studzinski is an optimist by nature, however, and as the conversation widens he’s eager to talk about the “entrepreneurialism, creativity and innovation” of young people engaged in the tech industries of California and Boston. “The simplest way to look at it,” he says, “is that you transform youth by making them taxpayers. As soon as that happens, they not only contribute to the government’s coffers, but psychologically, socially and in terms of engaging in society, they change substantially.”

He mentions Germany and Switzerland, where the ratio of youth to adult unemployment is approximately 1:1. Governments there, he points out, are focused on apprenticeships, internships and, in the case of the Swiss, national service (something he wholeheartedly endorses). “If you go to the other extreme – Sweden, New Zealand, Luxembourg – the ratio is as high as 4:1.” The problem isn’t just that employment has fallen overall. “In many cases adults are working longer and have delayed slots opening up for young people.”

So what’s to be done? “We’re talking about having some sort of United Nations resolution that tries to raise awareness of this issue,” he says. “We have to regard this as a long-term strategy.

“If you look at the environmental movement, for example, 10 years ago people were not talking about sustainability the way they talk about it today.

It wasn’t part of corporate social responsibility. We’d very much like to make the whole youth-employment issue a tier-one priority when corporations are thinking about their employment practices, hiring principles and training modules.

“If companies, as they do their annual planning, ask at board level: ‘What are we doing for youth employment?’ you want that to be a proactive, thoughtful, practical strategy rather than one that’s entirely serendipitous or reactive, or as a consequence of other employment practices that are already in place.”

Ultimately, the corporate sector needs to engage with NGOs and educational institutions to create “some type of troika partnership”. In his view this especially applies to multinational corporations, which “can have a bigger impact on the planet because they can consciously do this in more than one country”. He singles out the German engineering conglomerate Siemens, which has youth- oriented employment initiatives in place across 20 territories, for particular praise.

As for politicians: “They should look at tax or other incentives that companies can be given to employ, train or offer apprenticeships to more young people, so that the government bears part of the cost. Governments can’t be training people. They don’t have the expertise to do that.

“In terms of the law, there are some countries that are much stricter about youth being employed. Some, such as Switzerland and Israel, do have military service and others have national service.” The latter option – which emphasises civilian duties such as tending parks, working in healthcare and driving lorries – also fosters national unity, he says.

“Given that the life expectancy in many countries now is well in excess of 80, to take two years out of your life in your late teens or early 20s is nothing, if you can ensure that it’s going to provide you with some basis of national security,” he adds.

“The other thing is, you become part of a network of people in your age group in that country. You will have met a lot of people. It’s like when people talk about the McKinsey network or the Morgan Stanley network – I worked at Morgan Stanley for 25 years. The Swiss army network is another one. This type of network is very powerful.”

THE STUDZ STORY

John Studzinski has been a senior managing director and global head of Blackstone Advisory Partners since 2006.

Before that he was at HSBC, earning an estimated £25m during his three-year stint as co-head of investment banking. Working with Stuart Gulliver, his brief was to build an investment arm from scratch, and he reportedly spent more than $1bn on recruitment. His deals included Mittal Steel’s hostile bid for Arcelor in 2006.

But Studzinski is probably best known for his years at Morgan Stanley, which he joined in 1980, ultimately becoming deputy chairman. After four years working in the US, he initially moved to London to build up the European side of the business. In his time with the company, it became one of the top three investment banks in Europe.

FRIENDS YOU CAN RELY ON

If you want to influence customers, you’ve got to be where they’re at. But is the rush into social media really paying off? Jo Bowman reports

Social media networks are the party everyone’s talking about, and your business is invited; everyone understands that great services need funding. But there’s an art to succeeding at this party that many companies have yet to learn. Facebook is valued at $50bn (€36bn), has more than 500 million active users, and every month people spend more than 700 billion minutes on it. Twitter recently raised a new round of venture capital, $200m (€146m), valuing the company at $3.7bn (€2.7bn). Its 175 million registered users tap out 95 million microblogs, or tweets, a day. A Pew Research Center study of close to 25,000 internet users in 22 countries recently found that about 40% were members of at least one social network. Among under-30s, that figure is more than 80% in many countries, and it’s growing rapidly among older consumers, most notably among the over-65s.

Such magnetic figures have inevitably attracted businesses large and small to seek their fortune – social media isn’t just for the cool kids anymore – with wildly varying degrees of success. Some are making money out of it that they wouldn’t have made otherwise, but it’s clear that the best for business is yet to come.

Dell’s use of Twitter to inform followers of discounted products has famously boosted sales at its Home Outlet store, but Campbell McDermid, a London-based social media and e-commerce consultant with Dell, says Twitter-based customer support, discussions in online communities and a presence on the professional social network LinkedIn are all part of a policy primarily aimed at “engagement with our customers and consolidating relationships”. The sales are a bonus, not the point of the exercise. “The soft benefit is the most important benefit,” he says. “If your approach to social media is that it’s another way to make money, it’s not going to succeed.” Such is the desire to avoid a hard sell that in some of its targeting of the youth market, Dell simply offers a free online game that subtly says ‘Powered by Dell’, and lets word of mouth do the rest.

Jamie Turner works for ad agency BKV Digital and Direct Response, and has co-written a book, How to Make Money with Social Media. He says good social networking for business is like meeting people for a drink. You don’t immediately try to flog them something. “Consumers don’t want the party line – they want useful, helpful information. They become your friend, and people buy from people they like. You slowly reel them in.”

Subtlety was at the heart of the Danish Defence force’s use of Twitter in 2010, aimed, ultimately, at attracting more recruits. Six officers and student officers were let loose with mobiles and instructed to tweet regularly as they went about their day, with their comments streamed in banner ads on national media sites. Their tweets about exam nerves, annoyance at early- morning starts and football results helped outsiders realise that soldiers weren’t all that different to them. Applications poured in.

Toyota created a YouTube series of humorous videos promoted on Facebook to promote its Sienna family minivan; the ads went viral, getting more than 8 million hits in a month, and close to 200,000 Facebook shares. Humour worked for aftershave brand Old Spice too; its YouTube videos have been a global hit. One – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like – has been watched nearly 27 million times. Social networks are being used to promote altogether more serious concerns too; Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit started tweeting live surgery updates as an educational effort, but when the broader community picked up on its Twitter feed, the hospital became a magnet for people needing delicate surgery and, it’s reported, for surgeons looking for a transfer. Celestial Seasonings used Facebook to get suggestions and reaction to new flavours; snack brand Little Debbie uses Facebook and Twitter to encourage people to share moments of cake-related nostalgia.

Twitter’s move into the paid advertising world – allowing businesses to pay to have their posts lead search results or sponsor trend topics – presents yet more opportunities for brands to get sociable. The twin appeal of vast audiences and a low cost of entry compared with other media is proving particularly attractive for small businesses. A British skills exchange site survey of 1,300 small and medium enterprises found 60% use social media to promote their business; Facebook is seen as the most effective, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. The PeoplePerHour.com survey found 70% believed Twitter had practical business uses; 47% said it was ideal for raising public awareness, but only 6% said it had lifted sales.

The speed with which information can be pushed out to a large group of people makes Twitter, especially, an ideal partner for weather-affected businesses: airlines can tweet updates about flight status and when there’s a public-health scare or recall underway, news can be delivered direct to the public without having to go through a news organisation. Recruitment is another sector that lends itself to regular messaging to ‘friends’. Retailers, meanwhile, are starting to offer e-commerce within social networking, rather than directing consumers to another channel to buy. US department store JCPenney, which has 1.3 million Facebook fans, is among this new breed of e-tailers.

But the businesses so far making the best use of – or the best returns from – social networks are those born to serve it rather than those adapting to it. Zynga, which provides games to Facebook users who make micropayments of real money while they play, is generating $1bn in revenue a year, of which Facebook takes a 30% slice. A Twitter-based stock-tipping business, StockTwits, makes use of the speed and wisdom-of-crowds possibilities presented by tweeting; members share tips and get rated by their peers. Social buying sites such as Groupon, BuyWithMe and LivingSocial offer discount deals on everything from hotel stays to haircuts. And while many of the retailers’ involvement in group discounting is more about getting talked about than incremental profits, the networking companies are doing a roaring trade. Groupon raised an estimated $500m last year and turned down buyout offers from Yahoo and Google. Marketing agency

TBG Digital, which specialises in social networking for clients, and was a launch partner for Twitter’s advertising platform, has grown from 50 staff to 95 in less than a year, and has just opened new offices in New York, Paris and Chicago.

The route to success is not so straightforward for most businesses, though. Ryan Mathews is CEO of Black Monk Consulting, a futurist and author on marketing. He says much of the business effort to ‘do’ social networking as a marketing tool is a mess. “The rush to have a presence is accompanied by a distinct lack of measurement or even strategic thinking,” he says. “In the 90s, you used to see people throwing up sites that were clumsy, hard to navigate and not interactive, and the same thing is happening with social networking. It’s laughable to talk about best practice at the moment; there is no best practice.”

Management consultancy AT Kearney has studied the social networking done by some of the world’s biggest consumer brands and concludes that many have failed to grasp the need to be sociable and to network. Many simply apply the old way of talking to customers – a one- way conversation – to a new medium. The survey found that 89% of consumer comments on company Facebook sites go unanswered, and those companies that did answer rarely used the customer’s name.

“You can’t invite someone to your house and then ignore their presence,” says Mathews. “This space is all about interactivity, communication and listening.” The light touch required here – things like allowing complaints and responses to remain public, and responding within hours, not days – provides a brand with authenticity in consumers’ minds, but it takes some bravery. “Most businesses aren’t ready to do that … but if you want to maintain absolute control, forget it, you should just go buy a billboard.”

While the cost of dipping a toe in social media is negligible, the costs of developing a social-media strategy and putting decent resources and staff behind it are not insignificant. Is it worth it? That all depends on how you measure worth, and many companies aren’t really measuring it at all. Even Dell isn’t quite sure what the real value of social networking is to its business. The company last reported revenues from Twitter in December 2009 at $6.5m – a juicy number, but a tiny fraction of its annual $60bn turnover, and how much of that is money that wouldn’t have been made some other way is unclear. McDermid, speaking three weeks into his new role focused specifically on social media, said part of his job is to forensically examine the true monetary value of having an online fan and assess the return on the company’s investment in social media.

Other research finds the results might be encouraging. Nearly nine out of 10 companies McKinsey surveyed that use social networking reported seeing measurable business benefits, ranging from more effective marketing to faster access to knowledge. More than a quarter saw improvements in both market share and profit margins.

This is a sector that’s changing fast, though, and setting up a Facebook department is probably not the smart way forward for business. Social media requires a broader strategy than one focused on a specific application, however popular, and it needs agility. Facebook, Twitter and Groupon might be the hottest names today, but so once were MySpace and Second Life. And what will Q&A site Quora – founded by former Facebook staff ers and already attracting a huge following – look like six months from now?

Digital marketer Joe West, formerly of TBG Digital and Microsoft, predicts much of our life will be channelled through social networks in the near future; books, films, music and TV programming will be consumed socially, that is, you’ll watch Mad Men at the same time as your Facebook friends, by recommendation and by appointment. Networked games will become vastly more sophisticated, allowing mass multi-player function, live, across a group of friends or colleagues. “When Google Adwords (keyword bidding) came out, everyone thought it was amazing,” West says. “Now search seems quite bland.”

The whole social-media landscape, and the potential it holds for business, will all look radically different as more advanced applications for mobile telephony meet social networking. Already, people using mobiles are significantly more active on social networks than those who check in via computer. Throw into the mix location-based and interest-based targeting and this area really heats up. Mathews sees augmented reality projecting reviews and offers onto a streetscape seen through a smartphone camera lens. You look down the street, read the recommendations and get a discount on your meal. “The sky’s the limit,” he says.

A business’s success will hang on its willingness to get among the people, drop its corporate guard and provide a stage for what users want to share, rather than simply asking for people to be its friend. Friends of an Italian restaurant may have more in common than a love of pasta; if Luigi’s is in the theatre district, it might be that that really unites them, or the fact that it’s the only place in town that’s serving pizza at 2am. Mathews says find out what’s motivating them and give them a real sense of community – and a reward – in real time, based on their location.

Networking isn’t just for consumers, either. Businesses can network with each other to create communities of people with common interests. You like Luigi’s? Their olive oil’s now available at your supermarket, and here’s a recipe for great bruschetta, or priority boarding on a flight to Rome. “We’ve not even seen the tip of the iceberg,” says Mathews. “This hasn’t started yet.”

THE NEW SCREEN STARS

4G phones offer similar Wi-ficonnection speeds to office broadband – but some employers are worried about security, writes Stephen Pritchard

Fashion-trend spotters hang out in Milan cafés, New York galleries or Paris boulevards. Trends in mobile phones are identified in the less glamorous surroundings of an airport lounge. Business travellers, after all, are among the heaviest users of mobile technology, and quick to adopt new gadgets.

And anyone who walks into an airport lounge is likely to see plenty of them using the latest hot technology: tablet computers. Apple’s iPad, which launched last year, is already selling well. Other manufacturers, including Samsung, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Dell and Toshiba are also eyeing up the market. Gartner, the market-research firm, believes we will buy more than 50 million tablet devices this year; in a few more years, tablets could outsell desktop PCs.

Nor is swapping a PC for an iPad the only trend in the mobile business. Just as Apple, Dell and Toshiba see the tablet as a smaller and lighter alternative to the computer or laptop, so mobile phone companies have spotted a gap in the market for bigger phones.

For much of the past two decades, mobile phones have been shrinking, but at recent trade shows, including the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, larger handsets have been the order of the day.

Phones such as Google’s Nexus S and Samsung’s similar Galaxy S, Toshiba’s TG02 and HTC’s HD7 – which runs Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 – will all strain a suit jacket, never mind the pocket of a pair of skinny jeans. The reasoning is that larger phones are better for playing games, watching movies or live TV. If you must, they can even make a decent stab at displaying a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation.

But to make the most of a larger screen – and interesting content, such as TV, movies, or even streaming music services such as Spotify – subscribers need faster and, ideally, cheaper connections. Today’s 3G phone networks were meant to provide near-limitless capacity and high- speed data connections. In practice, they are already reaching their limits.

Research by BNP Paribas, the investment bank, suggests that Europeans might struggle to find a reliable phone signal in city centres and transport hubs as soon as next year, unless the mobile companies step up their investments in new networks. As recently as this January, T-Mobile announced that it was cutting inclusive data allowances for its UK customers.

Building new networks to take the strain takes time. So-called 4G networks are already up and running in Japan and the US. In Europe, some 4G trials are underway in Germany and there are limited services in Scandinavia.“The first LTE [4G] services are focusing on the cities and high-density business areas,” says Dan Warren, director of technology at the GSMA, a trade body for the mobile industry. “There are now 25 LTE networks. We’ve been working on roaming agreements for the last 18 months and we expect that to take off within the next six to 12 months.”

If 4G networks live up to expectations, phone subscribers should be able to enjoy connection speeds that are close to those of an office broadband connection. The phone companies and manufacturers are also trying to make it easier to switch between, say, an office wireless connection, 4G, and then a public Wi-fi hotspot in a station or airport.

This “smoothing out the bumps”, as Warren describes it, is as important to business users downloading financial reports as it is to consumers listening to music or watching TV: no one really wants to log out of what they are doing and reconnect. Phone software has come a long way since Apple first launched its iPhone and App Store, and touch interfaces are now the norm on more expensive phones.

But while consumers might be more concerned with how easy a phone is to use, and how it looks, business users have other concerns too. According to Peter Siggins, a mobile phone expert at PA Consulting Group, issues such as security matter more to companies that want to issue the latest phones or tablets to staff handling sensitive data.

In areas such as government and healthcare, security concerns have meant bypassing the latest Android or Apple tablets in favour of more established systems such as the BlackBerry, or even PCs. “The new mobile operating systems are not mature enough to answer all of these questions,” Siggins says. And when it comes to the gadgets themselves, just because the CEO wants an iPad does not mean it is a suitable device for an engineer in the field, or a healthcare worker, he warns.

Worries about how secure smartphones really are have also grown over the past few months, and the mobile industry is likely to pay more attention to issues such as viruses and evesdropping. Reports last year suggested that hackers had developed a cheap and easy way of tapping into a mobile phone by sending it a text. A spy or criminal can then listen in to a call using a phone costing less than €15. Business users are also becoming more wary of mobile email following attempts by countries including Kuwait, India and Indonesia to either restrict, or be able to read, messages sent from BlackBerries.

Whether such concerns will force travelling executives to abandon their smartphones, or will simply make them more circumspect, remains to be seen. But for the truly paranoid, there is the prospect of phones, and even machines, talking to each other without any human intervention at all.

This is not the stuff of science fiction. The GSMA calculates that there are 5 billion mobile phone users worldwide. But there could be 10 times as many machines connected to mobile networks within the next 25 years. These devices range from meters in taxis and surveillance cameras to more mundane machines such as lifts, air-conditioning units and vending machines. “This is being driven by healthcare, the automotive industry, smart grids and telematics,” says the GSMA’s Warren. If that’s the case, it will pay to check who’s calling before you answer. However smart the phone, no one looks smart if they break up a meeting to talk to their fridge.

SOCIAL MEDIA GOES OFFLINE

Consumer electronics giants such as Panasonic, Samsung and Sony have begun to incorporate social media elements into their products, emphasising the integration between the online and offine worlds. Facebook has long suggested the ultimate intention was to place the social network’s open-platform system – which empowers third parties to share information from its pages – at the core of various activities.

At January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Panasonic unveiled a “personalisable” TV set enabling viewers to browse Facebook and Twitter while enjoying broadcast content. It also lets users participate in multiplayer games on the web and provides access to Skype, YouTube and eBay. Meanwhile, Samsung showed off Babyview, an infant monitor that lets parents share audio and video footage of their children with friends using Facebook and Twitter via a memory card.

Polaroid leveraged a high-profile tie-up with pop star Lady Gaga to promote its latest camera, which lets photographers spread pictures on social sites. Further products utilising parallel technology include Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color handheld e-reader, enabling customers to “loan” books to Facebook contacts. Hewlett Packard’s ePrintCenter and Microsoft’s motion- sensor gaming tool Kinect also employ such models. Similarly, Sony’s Bloggie HD mobile camera is linked to the company’s Personal Space internet service, alongside YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Google’s Picasa.

Some companies are now tapping into their own branded properties, evidenced by Nike, which is teaming up with Dutch geo- location specialist TomTom in developing the Nike+ SportWatch. This can connect to the Nike Plus web community, which has 4 million members and hosts a range of data, possible routes and other information.