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The number of people participating in online social networking is booming, a report has found.

There are currently 9.6 million people in the UK who belong to a social networking site and that number is forecast to nearly treble in the next five years, the report by Datamonitor revealed.

Although driven by the younger age groups, many older generations have now begun to be drawn in.

A report by Hitwise/Experian Integrated Marketing found that the role of social networks would be bigger than ever in 2008. It said that no business or government could afford to ignore the role these sites played in people’s lives.

Datamonitor’s consumer markets analyst and author of the report Matthew Taylor said: ‘Consumers are creating and joining existing social communities which, if harnessed correctly, can be an important marketing tool.’

The UK has the highest social networking membership in Europe and has been quick to embrace the technology. According to the report many start-up networks are only available in the English language.

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Businesses need to look at new ways of using IT for collaboration purposes in order to help their organisations become more efficient, experts have advised.

According to Gartner analysts speaking at the Symposium/ITxpo in Cannes, companies should consider embracing innovations such as online social networks rather than relying on more traditional methods of collaboration.

One way in which businesses could do so is by reducing reliance on email and using wikis, discussion forums and blogs to allow staff to effectively create and share information that is important to the business, Gartner said.

‘Improving intra-organisational and inter-organisational communications with people and groups that may not be able to physically interact is the ultimate goal, and organisations need to look at new and innovative ways of making this happen,’ Nikos Drakos, research director at Gartner, commented.

The advice comes shortly after the research firm identified a total of 14 alternative delivery models that will change the IT market over the next five years, including storage as a service, communications as a service, remote management services, web platforms and user-owned devices.

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