Workforces to adopt social media

Independent research company Gartner says 20% of workers will use social networks as their primary vehicle for business communications by 2014, states PC World.

According to Gartner, greater availability of social networking services, along with changing demographics and work styles, are responsible for the business move toward social networking services.

As more workers with social networking skills enter businesses, there will be a profound effect on the old business standby; e-mail. "The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode," says Monica Basso, research vice-president at Gartner.

Microsoft has explained why it has not patched older versions of its Office for Mac, but would not disclose a release schedule for doing so, reports Computerworld.

"We cannot give an exact date, but we expect to provide these updates during one of our normal monthly update cycles very soon," said Jerry Bryant, a group manager in the Microsoft Security Response Centre.

Bryant was responding to questions raised when Microsoft issued a multi-patch update for all versions of Office on Windows, including Office XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010, and Office for Mac 2011.

Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, is increasing the use of partnerships to achieve its goals, says Robert Andersson, senior vice-president of corporate alliances and business development, reveals Bloomberg.

“We are no longer trying to make everything or buy everything - we are looking at partnering as a serious strategy,” Andersson says.

Partnerships with Microsoft for business software, Intel for the MeeGo platform, and Yahoo for mail and map services are examples of the new way of working, Andersson says.