Neville’s posterous

[...] It's the people with the expertise who have in some ways always been using real-time technologies. IRC channels, for instance, were originally used by IT to keep updated about projects. It's a tool similar to instant messaging and activity streams of the real-time web, But it had pretty much been inaccessible to most business users.

A new generation of user interfaces are changing this dynamic. Tools that had been inaccessible are now fashioned in a manner that users understand. People use the social web. They get the notion of the status update. The enterprise applications that have adopted this style are the technologies that get better use.

Machine-to-machine technologies that integrate the social web may help close the gap. These are tools that people are required to use for projects. By adding a "people" element, social applications may have more use for the business person.

[...]

Nice points of view in the full piece. I've highlighted just this snip as it plays to a simple view I have - it's not about the tech and the tools, it's always about people and what they want to do with them.