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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Web 2.0 Tools in the Enterprise

I first saw Andrew McAffee's post on uses of Web 2.0 approaches inside of corporations - quite good at identifying some different patterns. Then I saw Bill Ives Is Blogging Inside the Firewall an Oxymoron? where he talks about some of the issues with blogs within the enterprise and ends with:
Wikis seem to have less baggage attached to them and that might partially (and only partially) explain their recent rise in use within the enterprise.

I'd also suggest that part of the reason that I always suggest that Wikis will get faster uptake than things like Blogs and Social Bookmarking is that Wikis can be a better replacement for something else without much behavior change. The first uses of Wikis is as an easier content management system that houses reference material. It could be information about how to use some software, or interesting content that people have collected about a topic, or whatever. It's just a really easy way for a group of people to put up web pages. And, it's easier than dealing with your IT department's CMS package. It's easier than using an HTML editor and publishing your pages somewhere. It's easier than RoboInfo.

Is it widespread among eLearning Professionals? Not really - see Use of Wikis as Compared to Other Tools.

See also:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I manage Web 2.0 tools within Honeywell. I am experiencing the exact opposite to what you are suggesting. Internal blogs are being adopted faster than wikis. My belief is that the reason behind this is a blog only takes one dedicated individual, whereas a wiki requires a community. The area I expect to grow the fastest is actual tagging inside the firewall. We shall see! Good post. Folks can click upon my name to link to a post of mine about these topics.

Anonymous said...

I found a great article on corporate wikis in Business week that you may find interesting. The article explains how both Nokia and Investment Bank Dresdner Kleinwort are successfully employing wikis. Nokia estimates at least 20% of its 68,000 employees use wiki pages to update schedules and project status, trade ideas, edit files, and so on.

I have linked the full article through my blog.

http://blog.edugator.net/node/47

Anonymous said...

You have hit the nail on the head by focusing on the behavioural changes required, but I wonder why you say that wikis require less of a change than social bookmarking.

We're finding that explaining the difference between saving your bookmarks on your computer vs saving them into a shared workspace is much easier than trying to explain how you can have an online document that is effectively never finished.

Tony Karrer said...

Rich - I don't agree that a Wiki requires a community. I have used Wikis (e.g., pbWiki) as an easy to use web page editing tool with no intent for others to edit. It's nice to know they could, but that's not required.

Niall - I agree that social bookmarking is also an easier sell than blogging. I think both Wikis and Social Bookmarking are little behavior change, so I'm not sure I would put one ahead of the other.

FYI - the reason I didn't include Social Bookmarking in the original post is only that the post I was commenting on only compared blogging and wikis.