Web 2.0 considered a teenage tool

FREMONT, US: Social software technologies are exposing the holes in corporate communication and collaboration and at times filling them before the enterprise can fully grasp and control the flow.

A new study, entitled Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets, released this week by research firm Nielsen Norman Group, said that many of the most successful social media initiatives on company Intranet start as underground, grassroots efforts led by front-line workers, and which later are officially sanctioned by the enterprise.

According to the study companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, after which they integrate them more thoroughly and many senior managers still consider social tools something their teenagers use.

"Underground adoption of off-the-shelf Web 2.0 tools might seem out of character in the enterprise, but users see the value of these tools and are more often than executives able to translate that value to an internal use," said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

"Social software is a trend that cannot be ignored. It is bringing about fundamental change to the way people expect to communicate with one another. Companies cannot use social tools with their customers and not also allow their employees to utilize them,” he added.

Social software is not about the tools, it is about what the tools enable the users to do and about the business problems the tools address, suggested the study.

When left to their own devices, communities within enterprise Intranet police themselves. Workers tend to retain their professional identities, leaving little need for the organization to institute controls.

As companies have been learning from using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with their customers, they can no longer fully control their message. This is true, too, when Web 2.0 tools are used in internal communications.

"Web 2.0 has transformed the way users communicate, share and collaborate online, and while this revolution has taken place outside the enterprise, it has a direct impact inside the firewall,” said Nielsen Norman Group user-experience specialist Patty Caya.

Caya further said that as social tools begin to shape workers’ expectations for how they get things done, it raises expectations for how they collaborate and communicate and participate in content development. The social Web has turned consumers into producers and this will impact how they work.”

Nielsen Norman Group estimates a time line of three to five years for companies to successfully adopt and integrate social technologies into their Intranet, and suggest however that the political and cultural changes needed for its useful and widespread use may take longer.