Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: Getting Ho-Hum Responses
I recently had the opportunity to hear the result of a focus group that an unnamed company held to gauge the market for Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise. (I say opportunity, because I didn't have to actually attend the focus group, which is ideal for me because I generally don't like attending those things :)
What I found interesting was that the participant I talked to said that the general receptivity to Web 2.0 ideas such as tagging, voting, and rating, was very "blah". People had the impression that they've seen it all before (which they have), and there didn't seem to be much excitement around it. They've seen corporate taxonomies promise and under-deliver too many times before, and the consensus is that this is just a re-packaging of those same products and ideas.
Another interesting opinion that was taken away, which I hadn't spent much time thinking of before, was that corporate environments require stricter organization than consumer sites. They need more centralized control and tighter reins on what users are allowed to tag, what tags they use, what they can vote on, etc, etc. It sounds like Web 2.0 ideas need to mature a bit before they're ready for the enterprise.



