What do I need to know about Enterprise 2.0 and why do I need to adopt?t

Enterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing the emerging use of social software and Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis inside the firewall.

In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage quick and easy usage firstly, and allowing structure to simply emerge.

Web 2.0 like SaaS is changing the way software is built, consumed and delivered compared with traditional software development practices.

Employee Empowerment:
Without any planning documentation, without any scoping and without any project manager - changes can quickly and easily be made by any individual in the organisation.

Moving from a Top-down paradigm where everything is structured and controlled to a bottom up model where grass roots level users are empowered to make improvements.

Communication Channels fall into 2 categories:

- Channels - person-to-person OR person-to-group - email, instant messenger - stored in a tunnel and available only to those at either end of the tunnel.

Channels create a private conduit between the sender and receiver. Other parties don't know that the email was sent, and can't consult its contents.

- Platforms - group-to-ALL OR person-to-ALL - Wikis, Blogs, Intranet sites - available to everyone and can be augmented by everyone. Information is made available to all across the organisation and is not limited to the select few that have previously communicated about it.

Wikis, del.icio.us, Flickr, Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube, on the other hand, are all platform technologies. They accumulate content over time and make it visible and accessible to all community members.

Specific Web 2.0 tools that have been adapted for enterprise use include hypertext and unstructured search tools, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, folksonomies, RSS, social networking tools and mashups for visualization.

Problem with conventional KM software:
As McAfee states.
"Groupware actually imposed a surprising amount of structure on people's interactions, and that because Enterprise 2.0 technologies let structure emerge, rather than imposing it, they would be more popular.

Consider how high this sets the bar. Email is freeform, multimedia (especially with attachments), WYSIWYG, easy to learn and use, platform independent, social, and friendly to mouse-clickers and keyboard-shortcutters alike."

We need more 'Comfort Apps':
Email like search is what Dion Hinchcliffe calls a 'comfort app'. It is easy to use, easy to learn and universally used. We need to create such applications to proliferate Enterprise 2.0.

There exists a sharp difference between the look and feel of most corporate technologies, and most Web 2.0 ones. My favorite Web 2.0 sites are elegant, uncluttered, and bright; they have a jewel-like quality to them. I can't really say the same about most of the corporate systems I've seen and used.