Not Your Microsoft Social: It’s Enterprise “The Social”
April 27, 2008
Internet News reported that “the social”–an umbrella noun that includes blogs, wikis, podcasting, mashups, RSS, social networking and widgets–will generate either $707 million or $2.7 billion by 2011.
To be fair to Kenneth Corbin, the Internet News journalist, his story relies on data from two sharp-pencil outfits: Forrester and the Gartner Group. Please, read the story yourself in order to imbibe the magnitude of “the social” in enterprise software.
The key point in the story for me appears in the final paragraph of the story, dated April 22, 2008, is: “Admitting that Web 2.0 features are still in their infancy, the Forrester researchers noted that the technologies are moving steadily toward the mainstream, as older users come to understand and embrace them, and major media firms ink deals with Web 2.0 vendors to soup up their online properties with more interactive features.”
Like most emerging trends, the excitement for Facebook-like and wiki-type functions will have to work within the regulatory net tossed over certain commercial enterprises such as the ever-innovative US financial sector, the slippery pharmaceutical companies with their interesting approach to clinical trials and compartmentalized data, and the reliable health care organizations.
Organizations need to move “beyond search” with regard to information. But what happens if that shift takes the enterprise into unexplored territory?
The role of the Internet as a method of communication is a tired subject. Uncertain and litigation-averse senior managers in commercial firms have to trade off Web 2.0 payoffs against the very real possibility that a misstep can sink their careers and possibly their company.
Stephen Arnold, April 25, 2008
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