When the Economist writes about it you take it seriously. Period.  Below are a couple of excerpts and a link to the full article is at the bottom.

“…how far online communities have come. Until the mid-1990s they were largely ghettos for geeks who hid behind online aliases. Thanks to easy-to-use interfaces and fine-grained privacy controls, social networks have been transformed into vast public spaces where millions of people now feel comfortable using their real identities online.”

“Their other great achievement has been to turn themselves into superb tools for mass communication. Simply by updating a personal page on Facebook or sending out a tweet, users can let their network of friends—and sometimes the world—know what is happening in their lives. Moreover, they can send out videos, pictures and lots of other content with just a few clicks of a mouse…”

“In the business world there has also been much hype around something called “Enterprise 2.0”, a term coined to describe efforts to bring technologies such as social networks and blogs into the workplace. Fans claim that new social-networking offerings now being developed for the corporate world will create huge benefits for businesses…”

Read the entire article here.  I’m looking forward to reading the follow up special report on social sites in the workplace…