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June 24, 2013 // Julien Happich

A new study from ABI Research finds that integration with social networks will add significant value to enterprises' M2M strategies in the coming years.

Initially, this trend will concern companies internal social channels, such as Salesforce.coms Chatter, which is forecasted to be actively used by 60,000 enterprises at end-2013. Going forward, the emphasis will shift towards Facebook and other consumer-facing networks, which ABI Research forecasts to cover 2.9 billion users by end-2018.

Senior analyst Aapo Markkanen describes: Theres an intriguing intersection developing around social networks and M2M services. At this stage the activity is nascent, but over the next five years we expect the relationship between the two to become increasingly synergistic. The innovations it results in will add a strong social ingredient to the decades true megatrend: the Internet of Everything.

The immediate form of this is the mixing of machine data with Customer relationship management (CRM) processes. Salesforce.com has been notably active in this field, having already teamed up with M2M players Axeda and Digi International to provide such social M2M convergence. Meanwhile, there are also early signs of taking the reverse approach to this convergence and using social data to interact with machines. Most of these interactions stem currently from the maker movement and are enabled by open-source Arduino microcontrollers. The most commercially prominent example is a marketing stunt that Brazilian drink brand Guarana Antarctica ran last year, featuring a campaign car that could be driven towards its destination only if there were enough likes and comments on its Facebook page.

In the future, we should expect to see also two-way flows of social and machine data. According to practice director Dan Shey: Today, social M2M is about informational silo-busting in enterprises and novelty experiments in the consumer space, but the concept has enough potential to enable use cases that still seem futuristic. The day when we could use Facebook as a dashboard of home automation systems is closer than you might first think.

These findings are from ABI Researchs Convergence of Social Networking and M2M Services study, which is part of the firms M2M Services and Modules and Cloud Content and Services Research Services.

Visit ABI Research at http://www.abiresearch.com

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Social Networking and M2M convergence could be key in Internet of Everything