Andrew McAfee had some great points about the hurdles to Web 2.0 technology (RSS, blogs, wikis, etc) adoption in the enterprise. His points can be summarized as follows:
- Most workers don’t have time to generate information
- Web 2.0 technologies would have to replace existing information-sharing processes
- Most people don’t like producing information (the "long tail" contains most of the content producers)
- Companies will be reluctant to let unfiltered information flow freely as it may disrupt the culture
These are all very good points. People already share information with email and IM. He then goes on to make the argument that adoption will be driven by the eventual realization of how much more effective these technologies are. HOWEVER, I don’t think information sharing will be the driving force for the adoption of these technologies in the enterprise.
The thing that is really going to drive home the value of these technologies is when the information produced by people can be integrated with information that’s being produced already. This is why I’m such a huge believer in microformats, they are going to turn the tide and make these arguments irrelevant.
When people are able to cut and paste a link to an order into their blog post, or paste a link to a customer contact into a comment about a customer service call, THAT delivers real value. When people can subscribe to a feed of new orders as they roll in, and cut & paste questionable orders into their blog feed, which is fed directly to their supervisor, THAT delivers real value. They’re not just sharing content that they produce, they’re acting as the information filter. The company becomes an organic being that passes information around like instant messages.
-j
