Social Networking - Killer Application or Killer Feature?

Social networking capabilities are a killer feature that can be applied to create killer applications such as Facebook and MySpace. The applications can be quite unique such as eBay and Wikipedia which leverage social networking capabilities to create a clearly distinct contextual user experience. According to a study by Jakob Nielsen (2006) only 1% of web interactivity is truly communal so applications such as Wikipedia service, as an application, a far broader audience then the participatory social network that created them.

Tools are being created by companies such as Socialtext (wiki tools), Worklight (Facebook application tool), etc. to facilitate the use of social networking capabilities within Enterprise applications (see the links to Harvard B-School Professor Andrew McAfee's blog for an interesting perspective on this point). I suspect that as this area matures the social networking capabilities will become an important element within broader enterprise applications such as CRM.