Social Computing in top 500 US companies

OK, so this is a US based study, but interesting nonetheless. It shows that of the top 500 companies (as listed by the US magazine "500 Inc"), 39% of them are using Social Computing today compared to 19% a year earlier. You can find more information here: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/blogstudy5.cfm

I guess the thing that I find intriguing is what these companies are using Social Computing for! The term covers such a wide range of topics, it is difficult to imagine that they are all doing the same thing. In my experience, many of these companies know they should be doing something - they just don't know exactly what!

What is really needed here is a framework that allows us to position all the different offerings in the marketplace and then enables us to make some intelligent decisions about our choices. I haven't seen one yet.