social media

There are so many different ways to communicate with partners, customers and co-workers--by phone, email, instant messaging, fax, video conferencing, and social media. Managing each system separately is not only inefficient, but can cause conflicts since they all use the same underlying technology--the Internet.

IT job seekers have real reason to hope. No fewer than 10,000 IT jobs were added to payrolls in May alone, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting a steady month-over-month increase since January. And in a June survey by the IT jobs site Dice.com, 65 percent of hiring managers and recruiters said they will hire more tech professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.

As tempting as it may be to block employee access to social networks and social media sites, it's not a long-term play. IT departments across many industries are under pressure to relax bans and enable access to sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

An enterprise social media rollout may seem daunting, but a new Forrester Research report recommends four key steps to help it go smoothly. Also, can a CIO use social media to create business advantages?

With social buying sites such as Groupon, you round up friends to cash in on steep discounts on everything from restaurants to spas. Here's the lowdown on 10 sites that will hook you up with a variety of deals.

Web 2.0 applications connect like Legos, creating opportunities for companies to gather incredible amounts of data. On social networks and blogs, people post vast amounts of information about themselves. Marketers, meanwhile, are developing ever-better tools to exploit information about what individuals do online. Companies routinely unlock sensitive data for business partners. As businesses enter into cloud computing, they will give custody of their data to service providers. These trends create the potential for unprecedented insight into people's behavior and open new ways to do business. But they also create challenging questions about privacy.

There's no shortage of burning questions about IT security these days, some sparked by nasty threats, others by economic concerns and some by growing use of social networking and cloud computing. We spoke to about two dozen experts -- IT customers, analysts and vendors -- to nail down some answers.