Comments on A Web 2.0 Tour for the Enterprise

srinivas ramshetty — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:13 GMT

Good Article!!

Shiv Singh — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:13 GMT

Thank you for all the feedback and the thoughts on Web 2.0. I really like the idea of capitalizing on “selfishness!”

Talking about Web 2.0 Google has released its web apps as an Office 2.0 type package. They’re worth checking out. I just came across a great blog which I recommend for anyone interested in Web 2.0 It’s called Original Signal.

Masood Nasser — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Shiv, this is an excellent overview. Web 2.0 has not only the potential to increase organizational change. Organizational Transparency, collaborative business models, collaborative ideation, have the potential to move from being mere buzz words, with the power of web2.0

You mentioned an interesting idea on luxury brands, something on which I am doing research.

“By asking the saleswomen to vote on counter display concepts via a dynamic Web 2.0 website, Estee Lauder would learn vital information. If it allowed saleswomen to rearrange, add to, and combine those display concepts, Estee Lauder might discover new ways to reach the consumer.”

Am doing research for an article on retail, and found out that lot many brands in the garment industry are doing this already and it would be a good idea to involve not only sales staff, but also customers on the decision making stage. That would be a very powerful way of understanding customer behavior, especially when it is in context.

Chris McGrath — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

You know what we’ve got to exploit to get Web 2.0 in the enterprise? Selfishness. If it makes my life easier, I want it. Is your intranet rotting? Make your life easy: Deploy a wiki. Now if it’s rotting, it’s not your fault. It’s everybody’s.

I think this idea has legs. :)

One of my clients deployed a wiki-based intranet for similar reasons: she wanted it to be fresh & relevant without hiring staff to maintain it. Jerry Bowles blogged about it here: http://www.enterpriseweb2.com/?p=72

Michael Beavers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Shiv, an excellent high-level introduction. I’ve referenced it on our internal company blog.

One thing that I’ve been trying to get enculturated throughout my company is that Web 2.0 is not only characterized by collaboration and community, but that the technology developed around that is uniquely suited toward completion of cleaner “personalized” user tasks.

In short, collaboration architectures lead to…
...an accomodation of personal context for contributing collaborative content, which leads to…
...better-organized tools that enable a cleaner overall user experience that more efficiently assembles
...contextual, task- and user-oriented modalities and presents them only when they’re needed.

...which is a bunch of overcomplicated gobbledegook. Referencing live examples of Web 2.0 and getting us to think about how to compare with what we have in the enterprise is a far better and illustrative approach. Thanks much!

Jordan Frank — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Effectively, Web 2.0 is an organic, ever changing fabric knit based on collaborative efforts of the many. AJAX implementations make interacting with web interfaces speedier, in one sense, but more importantly can allow for widget type mini-applications to live within hypertext pages.

Deployment of Web 2.0 in the enterprise begs the next question: What is Infrastructure 2.0? Enterprises are likely to make a move from consolidating to single data repositories to supporting distributed architecture, distributed storage, distributed applications, and decentralized taxonomy.

Far from a mess, this architecture works well on the web and can work on the enterprise with consolidated directory, good server infrastructur and a keen understanding of how Web 2.0 deploys given a permission based architecture vs. the “everyone can read” nature of the open web.

My notes from Burton Group’s catalyst conference elaborate on these points: http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/B…

Nick Besseling — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Shiv. This is a good article highlighting the new web functionality being commercialised at the moment.

It is interesting though that much of this functionality has been around in various forms before the term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined.

The whole phrase has been adopted by software and Web companies to create another bubble. Anyone with marketing knowledge can see this.

It is also in the interests of consultants to continue the hype to sell services to clients that perhaps don’t really need such things as social bookmarking in their organisations (and other things being touted as ‘Enterprise 2.0’).

I highlight a recent article in ‘Intelliegent Enterprise’ by Joshua Greebaum
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/appmanageme…

Sure it’s an amusing rant but pretty much true as far as I’m concerned.

Legitimising new functionality that is good for organisations is great but I think it is a bad idea to promote terminology and hyperbole that is likely to be widely derised in 5 years time

Larry Brent Gourley — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

Great summary of Web 2.0 topics. It is great to see some of these tools finally making it into use in the business world after years of testing and research in Higher Education.

Just to add some background, CSCL people may be familiar with some projects begun in the 1990’s that involved elements of current Web 2.0 tools. Although the capability for collaboration has existed for years, it is interesting that things have only taken off in the last year or two.

I observed a networked community learning project back in 1998-99 at Virginia Tech that provided students with a virtual school using Java tools that supported synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and collaborative tools for planning, note taking, experimentation, data analysis, and report writing.

http://hosting.cs.vt.edu/linc/overview.html

Vincent Maurin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:12 GMT

I strongly recommend examining the work of Euan Semple at the BBC. He had a very low-tech and bottom-up approach to Knowledge Management using web 2.0 tools.

Shiv Singh — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:11 GMT

Michael and Alok, thanks for your comments.

Michael, I couldn’t agree more with you about some of the challenges with measuring costs and benefits. Companies recognize that there is a knowledge problem but no one has really “cracked” it in terms of harnessing the culture, technology and people. Web 2.0 helps with the technology and the people components but less so with the culture of a specific company.

On the bright side, today more than ever, companies recognize the importance of managing information/knowledge dynamically. It is only a matter of time before we see some extremely innovative examples. Maybe we’ll see some of them in the Web 2.0 conference.

Talking of which, Alok based on my experience and the research I conducted recently, the large organizations are not being that innovative in terms of how they are leveraging web 2.0. By writing this article, I was hoping to learn a little more about what’s going on. From what I have seen so far, I have not been very impressed.

On a side note, at Avenue A | Razorfish we are experimenting with social networking on our intranet. I will let you know it develops. Google “Peers and Forrester” to learn about our last directory+social networking efforts. It was an innovative initiative led by our San Francisco office.

Michael Andrews — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:11 GMT

It’s great to see a discussion of enterprise software, which can lag the consumer world in many respects, and as a result, is viewed as a dismal corner of the web world.

I agree Web 2.0 and Ajax offer many possibilities. Larger enterprises are acutely aware they have a general problem with information/knowledge to becoming learned by people not directly connected with the project or activity generating that information. What is a challenge is measuring what are the specific cost impacts of the general problem. In my experience, enterprises are particularly reluctant to spend on general infrastructure projects that have across-the-board benefits but that are difficult to measure in relation to itemized profit and cost centers. The other challenge is overcoming legacy infrastructure. Enterprises often are configured around fairly rigid Java-based page architectures and standards, and IT staff can be reluctant to embrace new technologies such as Ajax or Ruby.

Alok Jain — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:11 GMT

Shiv,

I think what’ll enhance this article is reasons for introducing Web 2.0 to the Intranet Environment. Lets say an organization moves to a tagging solution instead to meta data models – is it the right approach? Taking your example of Directory – I see value in bringing social networking concepts in Intranet scenario, but are there any case studies that show the value of this in Intranet.

What are companies like Ernst & Young, Nokia, Kodak, Lucent Technologies, and IBM experimenting with etc?

Cheers
Alok

Shiv Singh — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:11 GMT

Thank you for your thoughts. I consider eBay to be web 2.0 largely because of its participatory values and because each time an end user interacts with the service it makes the service stronger.

Having said that, I couldn’t agree more that these definitions aren’t water tight. Interestingly, eBay had a few web 2.0 characteristics before web 2.0 was coined. I am still waiting for more browser side interactivity on their site though.

Fred Beecher — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:27:58 GMT

At one of the many Web 2.0 panels at the IA Summit this year, one audience member defined it as “being able to do cool sh*t without having to reload the page.” Simplistic as this sounds, I think that this is where the immediate business value of Web 2.0 really lies.

For example, I frequently work on projects aimed at helping the client increase lead generation. On projects like this, balancing business goals with user expectations is a crucial and delicate process. Clients want highly-qualified leads; users don’t want to have to enter a ton of information. A “boring” Web 2.0 contact form can make this happen by asking a single, user-focused qualification question (e.g., what kind of info are you looking for?) and then presenting different follow-on questions as an immediate result of that selection.

This is a very simple capability of Web 2.0 technologies, but the degree to which it reduces barriers to conversion while still meeting business goals is, I’d say, revolutionary (and profitable!).

Jed Wood — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:27:48 GMT

Thanks for the Web 2.0 introduction. Just one bone to pick: eBay as a example web 2.0? Have I missed something new they’ve introduced recently? I’ve seen some call Craigslist Web 2.0-ish, but eBay isn’t the first site that comes to mind when trying to think of quintessential Web 2.0.

Then again, it’s hard to debate about exemplars with a definition as nebulous as the one for Web 2.0.