Article Idea:
The trouble with Web 2.0
suggested by Christina Wodtke on 2006/09/26
Great comment by Alexander Wilms, should be an article: “as a internal analyst with a big enterprise I also had to deal with this new buzzword. I am not that enthusiastic about it, especially if we look on an internal usage. The main principle about Web 2.0 is not the technology – AJAX did not fell from heavens but its elements have been around the block for a while. What is really new about Web 2.0 is the significance of the community and the “let others do the work” principle. If you take Wikipedia for example – it would not have been a success if not thousands of helpers would have created and maintained the content within. But Wikipedia cannot control the content – you yourself mentioned the GM example where the intended usage was turned around. For marketing reasons this might be a good thing to just create traffic – if you take the internal know-how repository of a company that defines certain methodologies or processes enabling everybody to change them at will might not be a good idea. A company might not want to share its internal knowledge for reasons of competition, not even within the whole company, and so the advantage of a very large group of contributors is gone. For the same reason external hosting of services might not be an option.
Web 2.0 services are sucessful because they also can be shared and even “hijacked” – Google Maps can be used by everybody because there is a welldefined interface. But as a company this service is out of your hands – what happens if Google decides to add advertisements to the maps?
Also Wikis and Blogs seem to be the hottest “must have” for a company. But how do you motivate your employees to contribute to a wiki? How do you prevent that they do not use blogs to reveal secrets? And do you really believe that the high ranking executives spent so much times on their blogs? I do believe that there are ghost writers already – so blogs will become just another channel of “official” communications.
Just do not get me wrong – I think that a lot of new and interesting ideas come with Web 2.0, but these ideas are not indended for an internal company environment. If you can disprove me I will be happy to change my views (and even think about implementing some of the suggested systems ;-))”
Want to see this idea turned into a story?
2 people said yes. | 2 people said no.
Alok Jain
92 Reputation points
Posted 2006/09/26 @ 19:40PM with
Christina,
I am looking at potential of Web 2.0 from 2 perspective – one in my own company and 2nd in my clients’. We are a large software solutions company and work acorss the globe – 30K employees, billion dollars in revenues. Lets look at 2 challenges:
a. When we are collaborating across locations such as building a proposal
b. Knowledge sharing from Project teams
I think a wiki has promise to potentially help solve these.
I think the risks that you mention like Google adding advertisement or people sharing company secrets are very valid, but there are risks in everything. GE had stopped use of Instant messaging for same fear, email provides same risk etc..
Mashups with Google maps or other such services are also risky as you mentioned, but they allow the company to move quickly and if it does happen that Google starts adding advertisements, am sure there would be signs before that actually happens, somewhere the base model of Web 2.0 will start to show signs of slowing down or problems.
So while there are risks in implementing wiks, blogs etc.. there are also benefits and we should look at ways to focus on building on benefits and refine these concepts to overcome the risks.
Matt Queen
130 Reputation points
Posted 2006/09/27 @ 15:15PM with
I’m working on a book about interaction models for web applications. The book talks a great deal about web 2.0. I’ve asked the following question of many and have not received a solid answer: “Where did the collaboration part of defining web 2 come from and why does that define what is (and is not) web 2?”
The ability to partially update a web page can dramatically change the interaction model of using an online app—that’s AJAX. The technology seems to allow greater access to data and information. Web 2.0 seems to be an “ethic” where the rule is “provide the most access in the current view possible.” I view it is an ethic in the case of Web 2 because it appears to be a rule that must be followed automatically until there arises a need to violate it. The product of that ethic seems to be what Web 2.0 promises.
The collaboration part of the web 2 definition is very flimsy. Ex. You have an “Ask the Dr.” message board that, say, cancer survivors post to. The board gets loaded with info from the Dr. and the patients—both equally important and useful. We might start to define this board as a wiki (not a difficult argument to make though I’ll save space here). Now, suppose we have two different versions of this board: 1.) patients are granted to post questions through the web, and 2.) patients are able to email the doctor and she posts the responses and questions herself. A couple of arguments ensue.
A.) Is it no longer a wiki because the patient typed the question into an email application rather than a web page? That is a weird argument (I’m typing this into MSWord rather than directly into the B&A site right now does that mean I’m not contributing if I just email this to Christina and she posts it to the site? I still wrote this, and you are still reading it)
B.) The second case starts to look like an “ask the Dr.” newspaper column. The medium changes but most of the collaboration part stays the same. Do we call “ask the editor” columns “News 2.0”?
Could somebody clearly and cogently set me straight on these issues? Thanks.
Alok Jain
92 Reputation points
Posted 2006/09/29 @ 13:47PM with
Matt,
Principally what you are saying can’t be argued against (atleast in my view), but I think these suttle differences matter.
I’ll take an example of geocities and blogs, both allow content publishing, geocities did a decade ago and had a great adoption, but not as much as blogs. In my view amongst many other factors (knowledge of the medium, bandwidth etc etc..) it is also that blogs have simplified the process to a degree.
Tim Berners Lee had mentioned in his blog, which he started much after most of the world that initial intent of web was this, now it’s being popularized by a Blog.
I think that’s what wiki is doing to collab space, and it’ll evolve. Currently the way we do the proposal is that my tema in India works on it , then send as email to me, I look at it , update it or just send back commenst in email back to them. Sometime file is very heavy so I uload somewhere instead of email etc etc.. This is going on fairely successfuly, but wiki helps avoiding changing mediums from word to email to ftp etc..
Is it Web 2.0? no in my view. I think wiki can be applied to build a web 1.0 or a web 2.0 app. It’s what we do with it that matters. And then terms like Web 2.0 mainly help people get a handle on whats going on.We and many others were doing AJAX much before it was called AJAX, the term helped bring focus around an important concept lead to increased aceptance.
Cheers
Alok Jain
http://www.iPrincipia.com
Mark Aufflick
0 Reputation points
Posted 2006/11/18 @ 16:47PM with
Quote from original comment:
“Also Wikis and Blogs seem to be the hottest “must have” for a company. But how do you motivate your employees to contribute to a wiki? How do you prevent that they do not use blogs to reveal secrets?”
I suggest the article should be “the trouble with inflexible companies”.
Web 2.0 shows that collaborative media works if people are given freedom. If ou are concerned that your employees might reveal secrets then either you don’t trust your employees enough, or the culture within your company is wrong (why would the employees be motivated to releaes secrets). And how do you know that it’s not beneficial to release some of those secrets in some way?
This comment reveals a major flaw in some company thinking – that somehow it’s in the best interests of the company to control from the top.
Let’s take two of my employment experiences. Both used wikis, both were multi-national and near the top of their market. One had an effective (internal) wiki and employees who were active on public mailing lists etc. The other had a wiki in name only, internal mailing lists that were inactive, and very few people recieved mailing lists let alone contributed. The first team was producing innovative technologies, had a vibrant atmosphere, and was contributing significantly to the profitability of the company. The second team was a limiting factor – it had an atmosphere where it ws better to do it yourself and retain the glory, and participation in internal or external mailing lists was regarded as a waste of time.
In these true examples, which team do you think would love to read an article titled “the trouble with Web 2.0”? I think the latter, but the problem isn’t that the collaborative nature of web 2.0 doesn’t suit the enterprise, it’s that some enterprises don’t have the right environment to take advantage of what it offers.