Web 2.0 for "Next Generation" Enterprises
Introduction
The internet has taken its time evolving as have the users. The First Generation of Web saw content being authored by those hosting their websites with limited flexibility. These Websites were application and technology specific and users could only "Read". The Second Generation of the Web has evolved into a "Read-Write" Web. Web 2.0 has come about to be a Collaboration Platform, enabling integration across applications and businesses. Surprisingly, Community or Social Computing has taken a lead over Business Computing and is showing new direction. A quick look at some Web 2.0 portals gives us the picture!
Web 2.0 Portals
Some of the popular Web 2.0 portals and their Alexa rankings are:
Youtube.com - # 3
The most popular Video sharing portal is a part of the Google portfolio. Videos are posted by users for public and shared viewing.
Myspace.com - # 6
The most popular Social networking site with over 300 million users and over 40% Daily active users. Started the Social networking revolution.
Wikipedia.com - #7
The most popular online free encyclopedia with content generated and posted by users worldwide. Its content is currently doubling every three months!
Facebook.com - # 8
The fastest growing Social Networking site today! Started in a Stanford hostel room in 2004! Dell and Jeep run their customer support services on Facebook now, among others. Social Networking is serious business these days, folks! Has supposedly crossed 300 million users as well!!
Blogger.com - #9
The number one Blogging portal, again from Google! With 8% of the internet traffic going to Blogger.com, Blogging has come to stay!
As you can see, five of the top 10 sites in the world are Web 2.0 and Social Computing sites. The fun has just begun!
Social Computing in the Enterprise
Applying Social Computing concepts in Enterprises are yielding tremendous results through effective collaboration and enhanced information sharing. Social computing is undergoing a major evolution in the enterprise and can be exploited for higher returns. However, the challenges are adaptability of new models and privacy issues. Privacy issues may lead to security issues at some point in time. Some common Web 2.0 tools and their applicability in enterprises and business are detailed below.
Blogs
Blogs or "Weblogs" have grown as online dairies. On the personal front, individuals are blogging their activities and thoughts while commenting on various topics. Enterprises are beginning to promote blogs as a medium for reporting daily activities across distributed teams, without having to develop costly application development. Use of external web references and multimedia provides users with a richer experience. Blogs, made available to customers, can aid in collaboration from the shop floor to the customers' production line. Moderation and Auto-regulation will prevent misuse. An approval workflow aids in ensuring content quality and management
Wikis
A Wiki is a collection of Web pages that enables users to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are deployed as sharable Knowledge aggregators and create a knowledge repository within an enterprise. Wikis are Web repositories of Best Practices, Manuals, User Guides, Concepts, etc. in multimedia format, authored by users who may both contribute and read content. Wikis can offer first line of self-help knowledge base for customers and employees. A workflow may be used before publishing the content on the Wiki, to ensure content quality.
Discussion Forums
Forums allow members to view and post the contents, while visitors may be allowed to only view the same. Members submit topics for discussion (known as threads) and communicate with each other using publicly visible messages (referred to as posts) or private messaging. Communities participating in a forum will usually bond with each other and interest groups will easily form around a topic's discussion. Enterprises can use Forums to post and respond to queries for problem solving and issue resolution. Forums can be made available to customers to enhance customer support. Moderation and Auto-regulation will prevent misuse. Optionally, an approval system may be provided for publishing forums.
RSS or "Really Simple Syndication"
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds are read using "RSS readers", which can be web-based or desktop-based. The user subscribes to a feed by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
A customer or an employee can set up an RSS Newsfeed to keep him updated on events and updates with a light mail format.
Repositories
Document Repositories provide single-point storage of documents and artifacts for controlled distribution. Repositories will provide an online document repository with Versioning, Publishing and Search are essential for Enterprises for efficient collection and retrieval of documents within the enterprise. Role-based access control will be needed to ensure targeted delivery of documents to different user groups.
Video and Image repositories
Online Video and Image repositories have completely changed the concept of Video and Image sharing radically. YouTube like streaming Videos can radically change the Training system in an organization with users being provided with online on-demand learning systems. Online Photo Repositories, such as Flickr, offer indexing and search capabilities along with features such as Captions and Tagging to enhance Personalization and Search.
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a recent tool, offering centralized repository of User Bookmarks along with User-generated Keywords. Social Bookmarking tools aid users by providing them global availability of bookmarks with the option of sharing the same amongst communities. The Centralized repository helps in website and page ranking. The User-generated Keywords help other user users to form a pattern for search to other users and the consequent Results. Hence, an efficient and "auto-learning" Search engine evolves over time.
Mashups and Service Oriented Architecture
A Mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data or travel information, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. Other examples are Currency Converters (integrate Conversion rates with transactions), Personal Portfolio dashboards that integrate personal portfolio with daily rates of stocks, currencies and other market instruments. Mashups help in integrating external data sources with enterprise information to provide a completely distinct, and often intelligible view, for users to derive greater value.
Service Oriented Architectures (or SOA) offer cross platform and cross application integration, often at the server level, across organizations and over the internet using XML technologies
Enterprise Search
Enterprise Search offers Personalized and Relevant Search, closer to the Users' preferences and business needs while filtering non-essential and divergent results, thereby improving the quality of the results for the users. Enterprise Search helps retain the organization focus for Search, thus saving precious time and resources.
Conclusion!
Web 2.0 and Social Computing hold great promise for the future of the internet, if harvested with a clear Web Strategy and can provide tremendous acceleration and benefits to Enterprises and business, big or small. It is moving the web from just transactions to building relationships amongst organizations, their customers, vendors and employees, while raising the user experience quality.
Organizations such as Cisco have demonstrated the ability to raise customer interactions while driving down costs. Cisco saved over USD 150 Million by adopting Web 2.0 practices recently, just on travel bills! As some industry critics observed recently, Web 2.0 is not going to change the rules of the game, but changing the Game itself! Web 2.0 portals are spawning completely new business and revenue models that will challenge the way business was being done till recently. As Tom Peters put it – "If you are not moving ahead, it doesn't mean that your competition is not!"
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