Source: Express Computer (India)

Srinivas Kandikonda Venu Madhav Gooty

With the increasing adoption of Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, etc. in everyone’s social lives, Web 2.0 tools have become an extremely critical component of the Web today. Social networking usage has increased tremendously and it is becoming a key part of an individual’s personal life. As this continues, this increasing group of users using social tools has started demanding its use within their organizations. Many organizations have now started to contemplate how Web 2.0 tools can help them increase employee productivity, improve client collaboration and deliver better quality products. While Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, etc. are more focused on individual lives, leveraging these social tools and concepts for organizational requirement is termed as Enterprise 2.0. The growth rate of Enterprise 2.0 is accelerating with many new start-ups developing some interesting and capable tools that could substantially simplify collaboration and communication, while increasing productivity. Forrester estimates that the global Enterprise 2.0 market will touch $4.6 billion by 2013.

Operating in a virtual environment

Over a period of time, within the corporate world, the means for collaboration has changed substantially. It started with face-to-face meetings but newer ways of collaboration evolved such as phone calls, then e-mails and more recently instant messaging / video conferencing / WebEx, etc. As organizations realize the benefits from these methods of collaboration, the use of social tools such as blogs, wikis, forums, etc. will become an essential part of the newer communication mix.