Endoh’s Dungeon

So much has been discussed, and the generous sharing from several commentators have indeed added value to my series of posts surrounding Web 2.0. In a way, I’m really torn between writing this series here in my personal blog or my business blog.

To fully understand and define Web 2.0 is really not easy. Despite all the time I have spent on researching online, there still isn’t any firm definition of what Web 2.0 should be about. As more and more unofficial research of my own is conducted, more and more new terms came into the picture. “Enterprise 2.0”, “Business 2.0”, “Second Life” and a couple more. All of which, are pointing pretty much to the same thing.

I have since written on Web 2.0 in general, the scene and a little on social media. While the bulk of Web 2.0 applications are highly visible in several social networking sites, it really gives me the kick when I began looking into the business arena. Business management is still my favorite topic afterall.

So, is the Web 2.0 hype viable for the business environment?

To kick things off, I began looking at the many surveys that are conducted. Interestingly, many surveys told their own stories, sometimes in complete opposition. These do lead us to wonder which can be trusted. NetBenefit’s poll claimed to have busted the myth of the poor take-up of Web 2.0, with a reported 60% of respondents using Web 2.0 technologies actively. Booz Allen, another technology consulting firm, published a survey which wrote that Web 2.0 users share and participate without privacy concerns. In addition, it was also said through the same survey that Web 2.0 user relied on recommendations from anonymous peers. The McKinsey Quarterly presents a survey (free registration to read) and reported that more than half of the respondents were satisfied with their Internet technologies over the past five years. This is a interesting note I will explained later.

On the other hand, business surveys painted another story. ITToolBox cited a Forrester Research, which Jeremiah Owyang works for, reporting that businesses are unprepared for Web 2.0. In Business Week, a survey by Security vendor ClearSwift revealed that 42% of employees discussed work-related issues on social media websites which suggested a high possibility of leakage over confidential information. Elsewhere in Webpronews, it reported the pale results of Fortune 500’s companies which took up blogging, in comparison to those who don’t and faired much better on the stocks.

Not so much of a survey for this, but Network World reported of how enterprises were caught off-guard by Web 2.0 threats like web based attacks and bandwidth consumption. Business Week also wrote in a separate article of how executives are still wary of the Web 2.0 hype.

With a diversity of different surveys and reports giving a different conclusion of how Web 2.0 can help businesses, I must say it is really subjective. There’s a lot more surveys which I have not included here as examples, and it’s interesting to realise that most of the pro-Web 2.0 surveys are conducted by IT firms or IT developers themselves.

Take for example McKinsey Quarterly’s survey targeted at Web 2.0, it was reported that one of the questions asked was how satisfied the companies were with their IT technologies investment over the past five years. It’s good to know that Web 2.0 applications have existed quite some time ago, but the term wasn’t coined until three years ago or close.

I realised the structure of a survey and the questions asked, are extremely important when presenting such push in Web 2.0 applications. The kind of executives being approached to take the survey will also directly affect the results and the story that follows. At least to me, the desire to include Web 2.0 applications and having implemented a few does not exactly relates the specific gains a company has received. The bottomline is still the eventual results, and not marketing hype created in a full paged sales pitch.

The contradicting surveys and reports only tell me one thing, that while the IT firms and developers are pushing hard for companies to start including Web 2.0 applications in their working environment, the businesses are not buying the stories very much based on their own surveys and observations. Who is telling the truth then? While I can’t exactly pinpoint who’s survey is more accurate, careful examination of survey context can give us hints whether the push behind Web 2.0 is nothing more than a bubble.

The other interesting thing to note is that most of these surveys frequently refer to the success of social networking sites like MySpace, Flickr, blogging platforms or Wikis to conduct business interaction. Will that be possible? In my opinion, I find this close to impossible. That is also perfectly inline with my personal observations that the bigger success is only seen in the leisure and IT industries, which can be read as directly beneficial for Internet and technologies firms but not other forms of business.

Like in the case of a oil refinery and extraction company, we know how tightly guarded they are when it comes to newly discovered oil fields and such. Given the clampdown on such industries, how can open platforms like Web 2.0 benefit their business? The other concern for specialised industries, is it necessary?

Will official business interaction over such platforms prove beneficial to businesses? I am still pessimistic, not until we see evidence of better security and substantial results from companies not related to the IT boom directly.