Ever since BT launched its commercial mantra we have understood that it is “good to talk”, but communication is increasingly multi-faceted, with talk slotting in alongside other forms of interaction.

Some emerging modes of communication are positively virulent. Neatly labelled Web 2.0, zealous users appear to see bilateral and multi-lateral discourse with others, using collaborative and social networking, as not so much good as utterly compulsive.

The advent of Web 2.0 has brought with it a huge variety of communication applications, from wikis, blogs, mash-ups, folksonomies, social bookmarking and podcasts, to name but a few.

For the business world, there is a real concern emerging on the coat tails of the social explosion ­- a concern that employees are now spending so much time networking, that business could become a secondary consideration.

But just what do we mean by Web 2.0? According to Anna Smee, marketing director of Web Technology Group, the catch-all term for online social networking is much misunderstood.

“In a way, the Web 2.0 label is a buzzword and there are lots of different interpretations of what it means,” she says.

“My personal view is that it is what Web 1.0 was always meant to be, which is simply to enable knowledge sharing. Putting user-generated content in the way of blogs on to the web is just the next step. It is an evolutionary process and not a case of yesterday we had Web 1.0, today we magically have Web 2.0.”

Whatever its definition, Web 2.0 is a cause of some concern among businesses and public sector organisations, with Kent County Council’s decision to ban employees from using Facebook last year symptomatic of the panic the rapidly-growing medium has generated.

Employers can not be blamed for holding concerns, with projections from one law firm in September 2007 suggesting UK plc was losing £132m a day in productivity as employees spent 233 million hours a month interacting with peers.

Such speculative analysis serves to compound the challenge facing those who say that businesses could benefit from embracing Web 2.0. It is hard enough to make a compelling case given the difficulties in placing a return-on-investment figure on what social networking technologies can offer.

Feeling the benefit

Smee makes the comparison with email, suggesting that people could not see a return on investment when the technology was first introduced.

“They didn’t know if it would add value to their business or not, and chief executives (CEOs) are having the same problem with Web 2.0,” she says.

“In fact, they’re very reliant on the young people in their organisation to feed back to them what they should be doing in this area. And until chief information officers (CIOs) are able to demonstrate the economic benefits to CEOs, I think there’s going to be a bit of inertia.”

Ian Campbell, former CIO with British Energy and now chairman of The Corporate IT Forum, says: “Part of the CIO’s role is to help CEOs in their understanding of technology and demonstrate its benefits. Unfortunately, this isn’t easy. As Web 2.0 doesn’t tend to be something that has a return on investment, it’s no good approaching it on that basis.

“You’ve got to use the networks themselves to give senior management an insight into the benefits of Web 2.0. For some people, this form of communication can seem like it needs controlling, but how can you control unstructured data? Some Web 2.0 technologies work in a way that’s difficult to comprehend and a lot of them will fall by the wayside. But you have to understand that they are a route, but not the only route, to get and share information.”

There is certainly a divergence in how senior management is tackling Web 2.0. Smee cites one CIO who found out his staff were using the same passwords for both their work accounts and their Facebook accounts. Her team promptly went into panic mode and banned access to any social networking site in the workplace, and even sent emails discouraging staff from using them at all.

“He was concerned that people were putting information on there unwittingly,” says Smee. “You had 23-year-old new joiners chatting about projects they were working on.”

Embrace the future

Campbell counsels against such a draconian response. “Web 2.0 is here to stay, so one should take the opportunity it offers, rather than thinking of it as a bad thing and trying to stop it. Management should not automatically say no to Web 2.0 collaborative applications,” he says.

“The young recruits coming through are all using them, and if they’re working in the corporate world, they want that same access. Web 2.0 is not something that should be locked down or shut out. CEOs have to trust people.”

Campbell also believes there is a generational challenge involved. “There are still board members out there who print their emails out and treat them as letters,” he says. “Whereas younger staff embrace this new communication technology completely, much to the benefit of the companies they’re working for.”

Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow, urges refuseniks to accept the inevitable with good grace before it tramples them underfoot.

“CEOs can pretend all the collaboration and networking is not happening or they can get round the table and admit there is powerful stuff here,” he says.

In also stressing that senior management must lead by example, Raskino cites the advent of electronic diaries in the mid-1990s, in that it took a few forward-thinking leaders to be the first to open up their calendars for others to access. Raskino believes it also requires senior trailblazers in companies to set up and start writing blogs to interact with staff.

As CIO at British Energy, Campbell says he led by example in openly using Web 2.0 technologies. For Annie Combelles, chief operating officer of DNV IT Global Services, which has carried out a number of social networking and knowledge sharing deployments for blue-chip companies across Europe, leadership by example is the way forward if a business is to begin to exploit the potential.

“If the CIO wants employees to use certain applications, the leader must use the technologies themselves. Most of the management’s messages to employees could be electronic. The amount of email to employees is enormous, so why not use blogging to communicate,” she says.

“Start with corporate newsletters and progressively include more types of messages. Meeting minutes don’t have to be disseminated by email or on paper; they can be written down in a wiki and are open for comments or additions.”

Best practice

A comprehensive Web 2.0 user policy remains irresistibly sensible for all but the most gung-ho, something emphasised by Kiran Sandford, head of IT at law firm Mishcon de Reya. “Best practice involves liaising with both the human resources and legal department to put in place a set of sensible guidelines, making it clear when social networking technologies can be used and when they should not,” she says.

“For example, it should be clear that such technologies used at work should not carry any defamatory information. Businesses may want those guidelines to make it clear that employees should not communicate information about the company using social networking sites or blogs. It’s simply a matter of applying a pragmatic and sensible approach.”

Euan Semple, an independent adviser on social computing and formerly director of knowledge management at the BBC, where he spent seven years implementing a variety of weblogs, wikis and online forums, is adamant that Web 2.0 will soon become a recruitment issue.

“I know I wouldn’t work for a company that wasn’t embracing the technology,” he says. “This is increasingly how companies are going to survive.”

Take a risk

Many of Semple’s clients are small firms and start-ups waiting for the likes of Microsoft to fully test the technology.

“I think there are risks in both approaches. As a small start-up embracing it, you’re subject to the speed at which things are changing,” says Semple. “Conversely, there’s something about the mindset that has been implementing huge corporate Web 2.0 systems which have delivered very little that doesn’t understand what we’re talking about.”

Web 2.0 may be an increasingly integral part of our cultural landscape, but establishing how many blue-chip corporates are embracing the concept remains difficult and powerful examples are rare.

“It’s surprising that we don’t see big investments in large-scale business model changes using Web 2.0,” says Gartner’s Raskino. “And most of the ones that are happening are internal. They have experiments going on for their own internal users, but most of them aren’t at the point of exposing functionality. I think there’s an opportunity out there, but there isn’t great methodology at the moment.”

Raskino says the elite 25 per cent of companies ­- those that are relatively business-aggressive ­- are ready to do something a bit more substantial.

“Throughout Europe in sectors where it’s quite important, they’re saying we have to commit here. The technology isn’t a problem; it’s the cultural change required which is the big issue,” he says.

“The levels of transparency required to have open dialogue, internally and externally, are quite difficult. So you’ll see lots of people blogging internally, but how many corporate web sites can you go to among UK FTSE 100 companies and find open bloggers coming out of that firm? That is the culture shift that companies are challenged by.”

There are fewer social networking developments taking place than people would believe, says Campbell.

“Talk to all the companies promoting Web 2.0 technologies and you’ll find there’s a bit of hype here,” he says. “I think a lot of firms are still evaluating social networking technologies. They’re getting comfortable with this way of working and holding on to see if they’ve got a winner or not.”

The future of Web 2.0

However, the more progressive companies have the vision to see huge potential in Web 2.0 because it accelerates learning curves, says Smee.

“If you bring a new member of staff into an organisation of 10,000 people, you know it will take six to 12 months to get up to speed on the main people they need to communicate with to get their job done properly,” she says.

“Whereas allowing somebody to access an interactive network to see who they are connected with gives them an immediate feel for the organisation and the knowledge experts. CEOs need to be facilitating this.”

Campbell claims social networks will become the de facto communication applications in the business world.

“The way people are doing mash-ups and such like, this can only get better in the consumer world,” he says. “In a more corporate business environment, I think it’ll take longer, because Web 2.0 solutions here have to be of industrial strength. Unfortunately, this requires a bit more investment, time and effort.”

The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies would demand a severe overhaul of business models. As Semple says: “Web 2.0 is undoubtedly challenging for people that have spent all their lives categorising and storing data in knowledge repositories. The trouble with all those repositories is that they are where knowledge goes to die gracefully.”

In contrast, Web 2.0 has put connectivity and access to information into the hands of everybody. Consequently, people are able to interact in a way that previously was not possible. It is a form of communication that is no longer time-dependent and has fewer constraints than traditional communication modes.

The issue has understandably generated anxiety and prompted questions among senior management about whether people are really working when constantly using Web 2.0 technologies and how customers might ever benefit -­ remember the apparent 233 million lost hours each month?

It does not take a suspicious mind to recognise that in many instances staff are abusing the privilege but there is a real sense that dismissing the potential out of hand when on the precipice of something commercially intriguing would be foolhardy.

“There are a raft of expectations among the business community,” says Semple. “And some of them will be dashed and some will prove frustrating. However, I’m quite sure there will be communities out there with significant functionality and capabilities that will show whole industries how to interact and communicate in different ways.”

Unless confronted by a school acquaintance from 20 years ago who you would rather not have to hear from again, it really can be good to talk, even for commercial gain ­- with Web 2.0 we just have to think how to do that talking a little bit differently.

The CIO's view of Web 2.0 - http://www.computing.co.uk/2210068