Then again, it’s hard to debate about exemplars with a definition as nebulous as the one for Web 2.0.

For example, I frequently work on projects aimed at helping the client increase lead generation. On projects like this, balancing business goals with user expectations is a crucial and delicate process. Clients want highly-qualified leads; users don’t want to have to enter a ton of information. A “boring” Web 2.0 contact form can make this happen by asking a single, user-focused qualification question (e.g., what kind of info are you looking for?) and then presenting different follow-on questions as an immediate result of that selection.

This is a very simple capability of Web 2.0 technologies, but the degree to which it reduces barriers to conversion while still meeting business goals is, I’d say, revolutionary (and profitable!).

Having said that, I couldn’t agree more that these definitions aren’t water tight. Interestingly, eBay had a few web 2.0 characteristics before web 2.0 was coined. I am still waiting for more browser side interactivity on their site though.

I think what’ll enhance this article is reasons for introducing Web 2.0 to the Intranet Environment. Lets say an organization moves to a tagging solution instead to meta data models – is it the right approach? Taking your example of Directory – I see value in bringing social networking concepts in Intranet scenario, but are there any case studies that show the value of this in Intranet.

What are companies like Ernst & Young, Nokia, Kodak, Lucent Technologies, and IBM experimenting with etc?

Cheers
Alok

I agree Web 2.0 and Ajax offer many possibilities. Larger enterprises are acutely aware they have a general problem with information/knowledge to becoming learned by people not directly connected with the project or activity generating that information. What is a challenge is measuring what are the specific cost impacts of the general problem. In my experience, enterprises are particularly reluctant to spend on general infrastructure projects that have across-the-board benefits but that are difficult to measure in relation to itemized profit and cost centers. The other challenge is overcoming legacy infrastructure. Enterprises often are configured around fairly rigid Java-based page architectures and standards, and IT staff can be reluctant to embrace new technologies such as Ajax or Ruby.

Michael, I couldn’t agree more with you about some of the challenges with measuring costs and benefits. Companies recognize that there is a knowledge problem but no one has really “cracked” it in terms of harnessing the culture, technology and people. Web 2.0 helps with the technology and the people components but less so with the culture of a specific company.

On the bright side, today more than ever, companies recognize the importance of managing information/knowledge dynamically. It is only a matter of time before we see some extremely innovative examples. Maybe we’ll see some of them in the Web 2.0 conference.

Talking of which, Alok based on my experience and the research I conducted recently, the large organizations are not being that innovative in terms of how they are leveraging web 2.0. By writing this article, I was hoping to learn a little more about what’s going on. From what I have seen so far, I have not been very impressed.

On a side note, at Avenue A | Razorfish we are experimenting with social networking on our intranet. I will let you know it develops. Google “Peers and Forrester” to learn about our last directory+social networking efforts. It was an innovative initiative led by our San Francisco office.

Just to add some background, CSCL people may be familiar with some projects begun in the 1990′s that involved elements of current Web 2.0 tools. Although the capability for collaboration has existed for years, it is interesting that things have only taken off in the last year or two.

I observed a networked community learning project back in 1998-99 at Virginia Tech that provided students with a virtual school using Java tools that supported synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and collaborative tools for planning, note taking, experimentation, data analysis, and report writing.

http://hosting.cs.vt.edu/linc/overview.html

Deployment of Web 2.0 in the enterprise begs the next question: What is Infrastructure 2.0? Enterprises are likely to make a move from consolidating to single data repositories to supporting distributed architecture, distributed storage, distributed applications, and decentralized taxonomy.

Far from a mess, this architecture works well on the web and can work on the enterprise with consolidated directory, good server infrastructur and a keen understanding of how Web 2.0 deploys given a permission based architecture vs. the “everyone can read” nature of the open web.

My notes from Burton Group’s catalyst conference elaborate on these points: http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog154

One thing that I’ve been trying to get enculturated throughout my company is that Web 2.0 is not only characterized by collaboration and community, but that the technology developed around that is uniquely suited toward completion of cleaner “personalized” user tasks.

In short, collaboration architectures lead to…
…an accomodation of personal context for contributing collaborative content, which leads to…
…better-organized tools that enable a cleaner overall user experience that more efficiently assembles
…contextual, task- and user-oriented modalities and presents them only when they’re needed.

…which is a bunch of overcomplicated gobbledegook. Referencing live examples of Web 2.0 and getting us to think about how to compare with what we have in the enterprise is a far better and illustrative approach. Thanks much!