Businesses should make more use of social networking web sites to communicate with their employees and customers, a study by Gartner has found.

A survey of 2,000 users across the world found that 80 per cent of members of web sites such as Facebook or Bebo used the sites for entertainment, and were not using the technology for business-related discussions.

Nikos Drakos, a research director at Gartner, told Computing that the web sites provided an opportunity for businesses to promote their innovation to both staff members and potential customers.

"With web sites such as Facebook and other Web 2.0 technologies, businesses have an open opportunity to promote themselves among their employees, and more importantly, to customers.

"For example, if there was a Facebook group about a certain company or a product, they could intervene against negative postings, or use the positive postings as a marketing asset," Drakos said.

The Gartner research said that companies are beginning to look at social networking sites as a way of encouraging innovation, but at present it remains largely untapped because of skepticism over its actual worth.

Drakos said: "Many companies have a big idea to embrace the Web 2.0 environment and use it to talk more to staff and customers, but it is yet to really become mainstream. There is a degree of skepticism due to a lack of good examples of how it helps to boost profits and productivity."

However, the report said that the use of the web sites will become increasingly important to the competitiveness of large enterprises in the future.

Drakos said: "It will eventually be seen as essential to all large firms, encouraging more open and transparent communications with staff around the world, and helping to improve relations with existing and potential customers."

Gartner analysts will further discuss the evolution of social software and how to use it for competitive advantage at Gartner’s Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit, taking place on 10-11 September 2008 in London.