This qualitative ethnographic study addresses the phenomenon of rapid social media expansion, which creates organizational challenges. Ongoing development of advanced technology products means that effective organizations must be more adaptive and receptive to new approaches and changes in their environment. In a hyper connected society, one where workers are linked through social media—at work, home, vacation, in a restaurant, or anywhere else—organizations need to unify their communication systems to leverage the potential that enhanced and collaborative communication can yield (Meister & Willyerd, 2010).

The research undertaken is directed at obtaining data on levels of social media penetration into organizational learning to analyze how social media use correlates with performance. In addition to identifying types of social media tools being utilized by organizations with formal learning structures, the research focuses on showing the importance of planning and goal-directed structuring in successful leveraging of social media tools in organizational learning. This provides a basis for recommendations for future research on social media use in this area to permit development of techniques for measuring the impact of the technology on learning and learner productivity and refinement of best practices for adoption and implementation of specific social media tools.