Social Applications can survive the pending recession

According to a new post out by Forrester, the current social revolution will survive the recession. Why? Forrester gave five reasons:

1. No tech bubble. This time, the recession may or may not have started because of the housing market. In addition, companies have smartly invested in technology (ie. No dot com crash).
2. Awareness ads loose effectiveness. Those Google Ad words on the side become much less effective once no one has any dispensable cash. They’re easily cut out of the budget. If they’re not going to be effective, why spend money on them?
3. Social applications are about consideration not awareness. In applications like this, the point is to connect with other people. So, with smart use, a little word of mouth advertising can go a long way.
4. It’s cheap. Social advertising is relatively free. Facebook, blogger, all things that can be used for no cost at all that can contribute to the social networking.
5. It’s measurable. As long as there is a way you can calculate how many leads your tool generates for you, or how much buzz you’ve created around the web, the social tools have done their job.

So what does this mean for the enterprise? With the impending recession, not only consumers will cut back spending, but large corporations will as well. So when they’re looking at all these new tools and ways to innovate in the enterprise, they’re look to web 2.0. Not only is it a way to promote collaboration among their employees, every employee in the enterprise can have access to the same information. In addition, companies have to invest very little money on training, because the majority of Enterprise 2.0 applications free for the taking are the ones that the business world knows how to use due employees personal use of the application.

This is just one more way to keep your enterprise innovating and staying ahead of the ball while money grows scarce. Have you seen an increase of these tools in your enterprise in the recent months?