Expo Examines Web 2.0 in the Workplace

After all, Web 2.0 wares lend themselves to this type of test, because they are generally very inexpensive when compared with conventional enterprise software. A Forrester study released this week found that globally enterprises will spend only $4.6 billion by 2013 in Web 2.0 products, a small fraction of the overall software market. "While Web 2.0's impact will be very high, and make the enterprise fundamentally different technologically, the money associated with enterprise Web 2.0 spending is going to be relatively small," Young said.

IDC analyst Rachel Happe sees Web 2.0 tools, and in particular social networking applications, impacting broadly the workplace, including marketing, human resources and product management and development. "It has wide applicability because people are finding all these work processes that it helps with," Happe said.

But for these tools to succeed in a particular organization, decision makers need to first have a thorough understanding of the environment in which they will be implemented, she said. The end users -- whether employees or customers -- need to see clear value from collaborating and communicating about a topic they care deeply about. This is key for Web 2.0 applications, whose value is directly proportional to the amount of workgroup or community participation they generate.

"You have to create content, seed that community and spend a lot of time facilitating and engaging with the people you're trying to pull into that community," she said. "Creating a robust community is no small feat and has very little to do with the tools."

Ultimately, the rewards for the business can be significant, because social networking applications with embedded wikis, blogs and message boards, can capture conversations that employees or customers are already having, but in an online platform that allows others to participate and benefit from them, Happe said. "If you can do it successfully, you can get a whole amount of value out of it," she said.

Companies must also approach Web 2.0 with the right mentality, meaning that, if their executives begin to blog, they must be truly interested in obtaining feedback from readers, said industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. "Sincerity and honesty are at the core of this," he said.

At Bernard Hodes Group, Hornung started a wiki several months ago and it is getting good traction, including participation from colleagues in offices outside of the U.S., he said. "There are so many things happening so quickly, that no one person or even one group of people can really hope to stay on top of it. But if all of our eyes and ears around the world can contribute [via the wiki], it would be a really cool thing," he said.

Hornung, who has been involved with Web initiatives for about 15 years, was at first perplexed by the microblogging service Twitter, but after he got the hang of it, it has paid off at work. "There's one client in particular that I started following him and he started following me [on Twitter] and it really helped us get some business done," he said.

One of his company's clients has begun allowing its hiring managers to engage in text chats via its Web site with prospective employees seeking more information about open positions. "Five years ago, this was unthinkable. You had to go through the gauntlet of HR before you got to talk to a hiring manager," he said. "It's a new world out there."

Hornung recommends that business managers and executives, especially those like him from the Baby Boomer generation, try out Web 2.0 tools, even if at first they make mistakes using them and the ROI isn't clear. "If you sit on the sidelines and say 'If I can't see an ROI I'm not going to do it,' the tsunami is going to hit you. By the time you see it coming, it will be too late," he said.

Web 2.0 Expo, which runs through Friday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, will feature almost 150 sessions and more than 150 exhibitors. Keynote speakers include Ning co-founder and Web luminary Marc Andreessen, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Mozilla Foundation Chairman Mitchell Baker and Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh. Exhibitors include Adobe, Microsoft, Amazon.com, AOL, Disney, EMC, Google, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Sun and Yahoo.