Such is the topic at the New New Internet Conference here in Northern Virginia this week. (Interesting name for a conference, considering some would argue that there’s really nothing new with so called Web 2.0 technologies.)
ZDNet summarizes some of the topics under discussion, where it’s noted that: “Technologies such as AJAX-style Web development, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and blogs are being used within businesses, typically in small-scale or experimental deployments. The social aspects of wikis, tagging and Web-enabled social networking can also improve collaboration among workers..”
It remains to be seen how pervasive these technologies become within enterprises, but a few things seem certain to me:
1. Most companies and government organizations can benefit from more interaction with their customers, and interactive web technologies (Ajax, RSS, Blogs, Wikis) provide a great vehicle for doing so. Thus, look for most corporate web sites to be retooled over the next several years to incorporate aspects of Web 2.0
2. Most organizations can benefit from better internal communication and collaboration, and these technologies certainly help. Watch for most company intranets and portals to incorporate Web 2.0 elements too.
3. Much more content will be generated from enterprise Web 2.0 deployments, and at much faster rates, so content management systems must either accommodate this trend or become irrelevant. My bet is that new open source ECM tools will do a better job than older proprietary ECM suites will.
