The English language can be pretty ambiguous at times.  For example, “Services” can refer to web services, software as services, or professional services.  Likewise, “Social” has different connotations.  Business leaders may have a negative perception of “social” applications because they think of lost worker productivity on personal social networking sites like Facebook.  But “social applications” can also refer to social-enabled applications.  These are applications that have incorporate successful “social functionality” (features) from social media applications like Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

This “social functionality” has empowered customers to the point where companies run scared of Social Media.  The only way to address these social-enabled customers is by social-enabling your workforce.  That does not refer to giving employees access to Facebook (or not).  It refers to giving your employees the same “social functionality” across the applications they use every day.

Following shows how Facebook, for example, is both social in purpose (or use) and social in functionality (or social-enabled):