Don’t get me wrong. I love hanging out with my social media buddies. They keep me informed and they are a ton of fun.  Their enthusiasm and generosity has facilitated viral growth in the leisure time use of social media.

Unfortunately, their enthusiasm is not quite as infectious as one might hope.  It appears that corporations in this country aren’t totally sold on social media. To be fair, they have made some progress — many of them now admit that they have heard of social media.  But, what are they doing about it?   Not much.

According to a recent AIIM report, while organizations seem to know more about how Enterprise 2.0 works and how it might be helpful in their organizations, it appears they are having trouble translating that knowledge into action.  Apparently, only 25% of the corporations that participated in the study are actually deploying social media tools behind the firewall.  To be fair, that is twice as many as last year.  But it still is just a drop in the bucket and doesn’t constitute a workplace revolution.

But is the revolution happening elsewhere?  It would be interesting to compare the performance of the private sector with that of the public sector.  Is there anything to be learned from government social media use?  According to recent reports, the Government 2.0 movement is definitely picking up steam.  How does it compare to social media adoption by corporations?

Back in the private sector, social media advocates have to be honest about the slow adoption of Enterprise 2.0 (i.e., social media behind the firewall).  Are we on the cusp of real change? Or is it still all talk and no action?  There may be some clues in the rate of growth.  If it continues to double annually, we should soon see a material change in the way corporations work.  So here’s a question for social media advocates:  what can we do to maintain (or even increase) that rate of growth?

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For more information on what’s happening with Government 2.0 in the U.S., see GovFresh.  It offers “Gov 2.0 news, ideas and live feeds of official U.S. Government social media activity, all in one place.”

[Photo Credit:  fatboyke]