Research Summary
Research Summary
How will Web 2.0 technologies contribute to 'Enterprise 2.0?'
Description
Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis, tags, RSS, and open APIs are clearly having an impact on the public Internet. Will they also be important additions to Intranets?
I believe that these tools are likely to have their largest impact inside companies. This is because they essentially allow all employees, instead of only a small development group, to build, edit, interlink, and categorize Web content. When this happens, online interactions and collaborations become part of an emergent system -- one that has dynamic patterns and structure, even though it is not centrally directed or governed. I have written case studies documenting the dawn of emergent collaboration within enterprises, and a working paper describing how an infrastructure of SLATES (search, linking, tagging, authoring, extensions, and signals) gives rise to 'Enterprise 2.0.'