Adoption is up and the line is blurring between personal and business use of social media.

FaceTime Communications’ fifth annual survey showed social media and Web 2.0 applications have been adopted by 99% of end users to support business processes. Social networking use for business has grown exponentially. While 95% of users now use social networking for business reasons, 61% said they use public social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube every day, up from 51% in 2008. Fifteen percent use these sites “constantly throughout the day.” The use of tools such as Twitter for work purposes has risen almost sixfold in 12 months and now is used by 78% of end users.

IDCs The State of Social Business: 2009 Survey Results study found 57% of U.S. workers use social media for business purposes at least once per week. The number one reason cited by U.S. workers for using social tools for business purposes was to acquire knowledge and ask questions from a community.

With these prolific levels of use, its hard to deny the temptation to backwards engineer these sites for some candidate sleuthing. But exercise extreme caution; there are risks of using the Internet to do your own investigations of candidates. If youre looking for just the facts, youre better off trusting your processes rather than using social network profiles and searches.

Let the professionals do their job for both candidate relationship management and background checks and resist the pull of joining the cult of the amateur. Instead, take advantage of social media to showcase your employer brand, and participate in professional networks.