By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail for 20 percent of business users – Gartner

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.

via gartner.com

One of the 5 predictions. And I do hear my friend @elsua telling the story outside of the inbox since years. The prediction perfectly fit to my todays speech at Twittwoch in Munich.

More predictions:

– Social Software gets mobile
– Social Analysis will become more important

And: A lot of projects in Social Software will fail – because driven by IT?