• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 4, 2009

As early adopters already know, many corporate intranet and enterprise tools remain far less sophisticated than your average teen-friendly social network.

As a result, many of the most successful social media initiatives on company intranets start as underground, grassroots efforts led by front-line workers, only later to be officially sanctioned by company heads. That's according to a new study from research firm Nielsen Norman Group.

"Underground adoption of off-the-shelf Web 2.0 tools might seem out of character in the enterprise, but users see the value of these tools and are more often than executives able to translate that value to an internal use," said Jakob Nielsen, "usability expert" and principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

"Social software is a trend that cannot be ignored," he added. "It is bringing about fundamental change to the way people expect to communicate with one another. Companies cannot use social tools with their customers and not also allow their employees to utilize them."

Nielsen Norman Group collected and analyzed case studies from 14 companies in six countries to find out how organizations employ social features on their intranets.

Among the participating companies were Agilent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, IBM, Telecom New Zealand Limited and Sun Microsystems. These case studies were supplemented by information from companies that preferred to remain anonymous.

While many senior managers still consider social tools something their teenagers use, younger workers who do not need to be taught or convinced to use these tools expect them in the workplace.

Also, communities have proven themselves to be largely self-policing. When left to their own devices, communities within enterprise intranets police themselves as workers tend to retain their professional identities, leaving little need for the organization to institute controls.

"Web 2.0 has transformed the way users communicate, share and collaborate online, and while this revolution has taken place outside the enterprise, it has a direct impact inside the firewall," said Nielsen Norman Group user-experience specialist Patty Caya.

"As social tools begin to shape workers' expectations for how they get things done, it raises expectations for how they collaborate and communicate and participate in content development," she said. "The social Web has turned consumers into producers and this will impact how they work."

The study estimates a timeline of three to five years for companies to successfully adopt and integrate social technologies into their intranets, and suggests that the political and cultural changes needed for its useful and widespread use may take even longer.