Microsoft Adds to Tech Industry Social Space

Microsoft is no stranger to fostering communities around its products. Now the firm has launched a social networking and collaboration site for IT pros called Aggreg8. The service lets tech folks set up working groups, post info and files, reply, tag and rate postings, and receive info through RSS feeds.

The world of IT is becoming more and more networked as sites catering to this niche bolster their social media offerings. Check out my recent ClickZ News feature on this very topic.

A study just released by Universal McCann and KnowledgeStorm has some data touching on the use of social networks by B2B tech buyers. According to the survey, participants said social networks are best used in a business environment for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

A few more points:

– 45.3 percent of respondents have a profile on a social networking site.
– Over half of them have a profile on LinkedIn.
– Other social networking sites popular with tech pros are MySpace, Orkut and Ryze.

– 68.8 percent of participants use social networking sites for biz networking or development.
– 58.6 use them for personal reasons, 33.5 percent for job search and 13.8 percent for sales leads.

It’s interesting to note the most popular sites with this crowd are the more general social networking sites rather than the social sites/tools provided by tech-focused publishers (CNET’s TechRepublic, ITtoolbox.com, TechTarget, IDG’s Infoworld.com and others). I’d venture to guess even though they may use the more generalized social sites, when they’re on them, they’re probably not really in a work frame-of-mind.

The more tech/work specific sites and their social areas, I’d venture to guess, are the better places for advertisers to reach tech decision makers.