The potential for businesses to make use of social networking websites remains "largely untapped", it has been reported.

Social networking sites will become "increasingly important to the competitiveness of large enterprises", according to IT research company Gartner.

Research director at Gartner Nick Ingelbrecht suggested the software underpinning such sites has huge potential for improving management procedures in large organisations.

However, he added companies should in the meantime ensure they have effective usage policies in place to address the issue of employees using company IT services to access the websites.

Julia Lin, project manager of research data and analytics at Gartner, stated social networking is not a new phenomenon but has simply found a new means of expression via the internet.

She added: "How to apply this in a corporate environment will be the next major challenge."

Last week, Microsoft revealed it had launched a social networking community called the Microsoft Partner Network, which is aimed at enabling businesses to share information.

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