Cisco Warns Enterprises To Control Facebook And Twitter Usage

Earle added that social networking in businesses is here to stay and will continue to evolve in shape and complexity. Companies need to embrace the change, rather than fight it. “People are using this stuff on PCs or mobile devices inside the firewall,” he said.

That’s why Cisco is working hard to prepare customers for the social networking snowball, noting that there is great opportunity in selling businesses “corporate versions of social networking tools.”

That would include IBM Lotus Connections, Jive Software and Cisco’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform, among hundreds of other solutions.

Of course, financial institution such as Barclays Capital, block these consumer-facing sites with prejudice, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some companies could go that route if creating a governance policy for social software is more trouble than it is worth.

And that’s a great question to conclude with for readers: Is creating a corporate policy for public social software use worth the trouble, or should businesses simply ban the tools outright?