Web 2.0? Not So Fast!

An interesting article in IT Business.ca, that indicates that many organizations are still not embracing Web 2.0 in all its glory, with many expressing concerns about privacy and compliance issues.

Among the article's key points:

• Employees are interested in the ability of Web 2.0 applications to help them make sense of the growing tsunami of information with which they're faced on a daily basis. Blogs, wikis and mashups can be very appealing when you're trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. But their employers are still wary of how to use these effectively within their current organizational structures. To many people, these tools are just electronic versions of gossip at the water cooler.
  

• When organizations do use tools like blogs and wikis, because of privacy concerns, they are more likely to use them within individual departments, as opposed to throughout organizations or across organizations.

• For many, the real need for Web 2.0 tools seems to lie in the creation of mashups, which combine data and information from two or more sources to create new knowledge. Workers are not necessarily looking for more information--they're looking for GOOD information and a way to make sense of it all.
  

• An interesting area to explore is the idea of employees with their own individual home pages, similar to MySpace, but more professional. Staff could maintain an online portfolio with information describing their skills and talent areas, projects they've worked on, etc. They could also use tags that others could then search to find someone who is knowledgeable about a particular topic for which they need more information, etc. Obviously this makes sense primarily for larger organizations, but it could be a good way to capture and access the expertise of all employees.

• The article also notes that recent grads have begun turning down job offers from organizations that do not allow them to use tools like Instant Messenger or MySpace. It will be an interesting culture clash as more and more tech-savvy graduates enter the marketplace. How will organizations respond to their desire to work differently?  While to management, these tools may be considered "time-wasters," to Gen Y (and some Gen X-ers and even Baby Boomers), these tools are indispensable to their more socially-oriented, networked way of getting work done.

Michele

Comments

[Beth]

Great find!!! Thanks for summarizing. Have you read Dave Pollard's piece on slow adoption of these tools?

[Michele Martin]

Dave's piece is great and thought-provoking. In the past few days I've been doing some thinking again on the whole issue and pulling together various ideas. I'd like to make some sense of them this weekend.