Taking Web 2.0 to the next level

With next few years expected to see a surge in the use of Web 2.0 technologies, we sit down with ANDRÉ BONVANIE to discuss their benefits to organisations and the role social sites can play.

What is driving this growth in Web 2.0 technologies?

André Bonvanie. In a study conducted by McKinsey, Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University, calls the underused human potential at companies an immense 'cognitive surplus' and one that could be tapped by participatory tools. Corporate leaders are, of course, eager to find new ways to add value to their organisations. Because traditional tools were traditionally to hierarchical oriented and didn't do anything to stimulate people sharing their knowledge profile, this IQ surplus never surfaced. Web 2.0 allows for people to be in control about their knowledge profile beyond organisational boundaries and facilitate in creating pockets of knowledge that can be (re)used by everyone. They allow for participation of the entire organisation in harvesting new ideas to improve the overall organisation's performance.

What advice would you offer organisations looking deploy Facebook and/or Twitter as a business tool and what challenges does this throw up?

AB. The seismic success of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and other social computing tools often creates soaring expectations for viral adoption of social computing in business settings. While the 'just build it and they will come' strategy works in the consumer world, it's a dangerous approach for business: users may never come, or they may come and waste their time. That's why a implementing a business social network like social sites offers a much better fit in terms of getting new employees on board, making sure confidential content stays confidential end that you allow for identifying your corporate champions. We've seen Facebook change its application a few times already, and you may not like these changes at all, and these could actually break some of the processes you have set up on these consumer-oriented platforms.

Do you have an example of where you recently helped an organisation by supplying your products and services?

AB. Universal McCann (UM) is a global media communications agency

delivering the 'Next Thing Now' to the world's leading marketers and strategic thinkers. UM selected NewsGator Social Sites and UM employees can now quickly browse through the company's intranet and find the latest content headlines, view the most relevant/popular portal content and easily learn about other employees at any office in the world. The social computing platform also enables employees to discover colleagues and subject matter experts, form social networks, and build communities based on areas of interest, rather than geography or project teams. The social computing platform enables UM to enhance each person's effectiveness with the collective wisdom of the worldwide organisation - driving significant business value and customer satisfaction.

Looking into your crystal ball, what are your predictions for how Web 2.0 technologies will evolve in the future and what will it mean for business?

AB. I'm quoting Gartner's Nicos Drakos in saying that goal of an integrated portal with a social networking system is to simplify the process of personalising, finding and exploring information via social filtering - that is based on how information relates to people (who wrote it, who subscribes to it, what my colleagues read, what they rate highly and so on)." So by using these Web 2.0 tools, and even tools that will be surfacing in the next year or so, our view is that people will have a social fingerprint that describes them and makes it easy for other people to find them for collaboration on shared projects and tasks.

André Bonvanie leads NewsGator Technologies' European office. NewsGator provides social computing solutions including NewsGator Enterprise Server and Social Sites. For more information contact him at andreb@newsgator.com or +31 (20) 561 7038.