Web 2.0 vs Enterprise 2.0 Part 2

Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 18 May, 2008 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 |

Both these concepts are almost the same. Web 2.0 is about using social networking platforms and Enterprise 2.0 is about using social networking platforms within an organisation. However, the environment in which both is operating in is vastly different thus the final outcome can be very different too. Below are some reasons why:

1) Enterprise search is generally not as powerful and integrated as the WWW. If data cannot be found, its as good as not having it. So what if you have a good Wiki and an enterprise “facebook” to help locate people?

2) Work is, after all, just work – to most people. The reason why facebook is successful is because you not only can stay connected with friends, you can do absolutely retarded things on it. You can help feed your mates’ virtual fishes or give them a virtual bourbon. These silly things makes it fun thus users tend to update their profile more often.

For an organisation the user profile will be the key to your corporate “facebook”. If people have a corporate facebook but doesn’t update it, then might as well not have it. They have no incentive to update it anyway coz if they keep it up to date, they get more work!

3) People are busy at work. The fundamental reason why Web 2.0 is successful is because people pool in their FREE time to update their areas of interest like doing silly things on facebook or update Wikipedia on a topic that they are interested in or write a blog like this. However, assuming people are busy at work all day, would they still contribute? Even if they are free for 1 hour, would they rather contribute to a wiki, blog or update something somewhere or would they prefer to go for a coffee, run their personal errands or chat to a colleague? I hope they do but I know that’s NOT reality.

All the above issues I have stated can be rectified and different organisations would use different ways to tackle this and there is no hard and fast solution. I hope I have explained the differences between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 well here.