Sick of hearing about Web 2.0? You're not alone: An InformationWeek poll found heavy skepticism about Web 2.0 technologies. Few enterprises are adopting them, and fewer still find them useful.
The complaints start with the term itself. " 'Web 2.0' is a widely used phrase devoid of meaningful content," says George Stasky, a network administrator at cellular repeater company Certified Installation Associates. He investigated Web-based applications as a way for his company's engineers to share information while at customer sites, but quickly rejected them all. "Stop reading the brochure and start using some of these technologies in a simulated environment. You will soon see that they fall short of their promise and disappear."
When asked to define Web 2.0, more than half of the 120 respondents said that it's an overhyped buzzword (See Figure 1). It's easy to see why: Every popular Website seems to get stuck with the 2.0 label, and vendors have been quick to jump on board the bandwagon. But while most enterprises will see little business case for using MySpace
or YouTube Inc. , other Web 2.0-style technologies are finding a place. A look at early adopters of wikis, mashups, social networking, and Second Life shows how the latest consumer fads can have a real impact on the workplace.
Though the term is often abused, all the various technologies, products, and sites grouped together as Web 2.0 do have one thing in common: interactivity. The original Web was based on a simple client-server architecture, designed for electronic publishing. That worked well for Internet-based books, magazines, and mail-order catalogs, but not so well for more complex applications.
Web 2.0 is closer to the peer-to-peer architecture of the underlying Internet, designed for two-way communication. At the technical level, it replaces static HTML with (usually) JavaScript applications that continuously send and receive small chunks of XML or text. At the social level, it means Websites that let people communicate with each other, not just read or shop. Instead of passive consumers, Web surfers can become active creators. This is why Wikipedia is seen as the archetypal Web 2.0 site, even though it's been around for six years and doesn't feature much new technology.
That ought to make Web 2.0 ideally suited for business use. After all, most workplaces are about production, not consumption. However, enterprises lag far behind consumers in adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. What's more, our poll shows that interest in technologies like blogs, wikis, and mashups has gone down during 2007, despite their explosive growth outside the firewall.
Part of the reason is that business users already have access to more sophisticated versions of the same technologies. Blogging is publishing, a wiki is a CMS (content management system), and Ajax is a more standardized way of achieving what many internal enterprise apps already do with ActiveX or Java. That doesn't mean the new technologies can be ignored – their lower costs mean they will quickly overtake the legacy platforms – but it does mean they need to fit in with their predecessors.
While the Web 2.0 has pros and cons we should check with the security point of view when we are dealing with Web2.0 applications. Rich Internet Technologies(eg AJAX) are giving most to the user experience, timeliness, server times etc...but are we chcking the security issues...and indirectly with our data security...
Today's interactive Webinar based on this report featured two executives from Thomson Financial. They talked in more detail about using enterprise mashups to enable application development by non-IT staff, as well as about having meetings within Second Life.
Some people asked for the presenters' email addresses, which weren't featured in the presentation:
Warren Breakstone, Executive Vice President, warren.breakstone at thomson.com
John Hastings-Kimball, Vice President, john.hastings-kimball at thomson.com
Mine is adornan at nwc.com. Of course, you can also post questions here.
Some of these systems allow one-way connections, aka stalking: You can make people your
"friends" whether they want it or not, and even if they're not
actually members of the site or service.
The theory is that a colleague or someone else who actually returns
your emails might be able to introduce you to your target.
Some Web 2.0 capabilities such as AJAX, wikis and feed technologies have already proven their worth to the business. Blogging is getting more widely accepted as businesses discover that journalists and analysts no longer have a monopoly on thought-leadership. Social networking has more to prove, although companies such as Serena Software are betting big that applications like facebook can help them bring back the feeling of working in a small, close-knit and nimble organization. Mashups, however, are the bad boy of Web 2.0 techniques. Sure they have the cool factor, but the value to the business is still widely in doubt.
In his blog post last week, Dion Hinchcliffe discussed ten challenges in the way of widespread mashup adoption within the business. One of the challenges he cites, and one I think we'd better solve first, is the lack of killer applications demonstrating the usefulness of mashups to the business.
The Thompson Financial example cited in this article is an interesting study in how to build a killer mashup application. Why did they succeed? First, Thompson was mashing before mashing was cool, so from the start they concentrated on solving their business problems, not on whether they were at the forefront of Web 2.0 innovation. Second, while they did pull together information and visual elements from diverse sources, and they did present the data to end-users in a unified and seamless interface, they also put the mashed data into the context of a business activity. That is a key distinction between a toy and a real business mashup. In fact, a real business mashup has more in common with BPM than it does with cool web development using Google Maps.
Do I believe that mashups will eventually get their 'Business Chops?' Of course. Thompson demonstrates that chops are possible. But we've got to change the way we think about mashups. They aren't just a 'new' way to pull together data, and it's not an end in itself to show a cool looking map. But when the data and visual elements are combined in the context of an actual business activity, then you've got chops.
Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D.
Strategic Research Analyst
Serena Software
Facebook has a feature called "limited profile" where you can pick and choose what certain "friends" can see on your profile and what they cannot. This allows you to be accessible to people while also keeping some information to yourself or your close, personal circle of friends.
CEOs do like to assure the rank and file that they are accessible and eager to communicate. I wonder how they could do that and then put a velvet rope around their Facebook profile.
re: "
Workers will use it to suck up to the boss. What happens when everyone wants to be online best buddies with the CEO?"
This is irrelevant. A CEO can manage who he buddies up with online the same way he manages who he buddies up to in real life. This is probably the least of social networking's problems. Users can make private or limited profiles and pick and choose who to communicate with.
It's just another bubble. The only businesses that make money from it are people running social networking startups and VCs who can find a greater fool.
Workers will use it to suck up to the boss. What happens when everyone wants to be online best buddies with the CEO?
With ad-supported Internet access, there's the extra problem of just how the ads get into the content. Unless it's only accessible through a custom adware client, the ISP needs to insert ads right inside Web pages. That doesn't work with non-Web traffic and it can break a lot of apps, especially with the move to Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax.
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In big cities or well populated suburban areas of the United States, broadband is ubiquitous. Getting it is as easy as calling the local cable company and asking to send someone over to hook it up. But in other areas around the country, broadband is non-existent. And the sheer number of people without it might surprise some of the luckier Web users who have high-speed Internet connections.
Router hacking and modem security is in the news again, thanks to a presentation at Black Hat in Las Vegas this week and to the associated sensational press response.
The beauty of the digital world is that it offers logs and metrics. This can also be a huge problem. Many organizations base everything, from investment value to performance bonuses to what an author is paid per piece, solely on these metrics.
As the array of cloud computing alternatives expands, the debate regarding industry standards seems to escalate. The idea of standards is not new to the technology industry, but applying these principles to the cloud computing environment poses unique challenges.
Most of us would hate to live in a house made of glass. Yet that is what the Internet is -- a big glass house into which many people can peer and see where you are surfing and what you are up to.
Getting to Work on Smart Work: How IT Is Transforming the Implementation of the 'Internet of Things' Organizations in all industry sectors are becoming more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent -- and that's changing the way they approach virtually every facet of their operations. It's up to IT to help organizations adopt a "Three I's" approach that leverages the emerging Internet of Things and enables them to work smarter. READ THIS eBOOK
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There's a public-policy war on copyright that nobody is winning, and inconsistencies in viewpoint and interpretation seem to be multiplying. We need to step back and think our policies over again, or we risk having a strategy that fails everyone.
Ultraviolet is an industry-wide attempt to standardize video content delivery across multiple platforms. Apart from the fact that it’s based in the cloud, relies on the DRM system, and isn’t backed by Apple… it sounds great!
The FCC's Sixth Broadband Report has a hidden secret. But here’s a hint: The regulatory body plans to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service.
Once defined by epic journeys, planning, and maps, the phrase "on the road" takes on new meaning in a digital age, where we can make all our decisions using our connected devices en route.
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