Managing a Web 2.0 Strategy

Managing a Web 2.0 Strategy
By Kim Jones, of Sun Microsystems

Published: July 4 2008 10:14 | Last updated: July 4 2008 10:14

There is a Japanese proverb: “None of us are as smart as all of us”. In 2004, Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive International coined the term “Web 2.0”, when they chose it as the name for a conference focused on participative web technologies.

Wikipedia, considered by many an exemplary Web 2.0 application, defines Web 2.0 as “a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 refers to a diverse set of technologies and approaches designed to capture our collective intelligence through online, two-way dialogue.

It offers a new way of doing business: one that encompasses new technologies and business models that allow organisations to collaborate, streamline and accelerate business processes between customers, employees, and partners.

Getting started is easy. Blogs and bulletin boards cost little to set up, and even if the link between the traffic on such sites and the incremental revenue generated is hard to measure, the information coming from the community provides valuable insights to the business.

Incorporating these insights back into business processes will in turn increase your value to the community. We can see this today in some of the leading Web 2.0 destinations such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Google – but for most organisations, the successful incorporation of Web 2.0 remains a challenge as, in many cases, it is an adjunct to, not an integral part of the business strategy.

Companies of all sizes, from a one-person start-up to a large enterprise, will undoubtedly benefit by integrating Web 2.0 technologies as a strategic differentiator in their business strategy. A good example of this is a UK company, Favorit Limited. Blogs have become extremely popular over the last few years, with various estimates putting the number of existing sites at more than 75m. Favorit specialises in bringing social media to a mass worldwide internet audience, and works with all of the complicated content online to simplify information for their users.

We also see examples of organisations using established Web 2.0 sites to improve their operational efficiency, such as the flight crew of a major airline that has chosen to use Facebook to manage schedules and a management consultancy using Facebook for the co-ordination of a new starters’ ”onboarding” programme.

We know that strong leadership, outstanding innovation, clever branding and effective change management are the building blocks of a successful organisation, but over time the business can fail if the world changes and you are unprepared for it. In terms of interaction, the world is changing rapidly, with most of us participating on the web every single day. Smart organisations are adopting new network-centric technologies and services to understand and meet our growing expectations in order to build and maintain their competitive edge. Continued competitiveness must be a goal we all strive to achieve and Web 2.0 plays an increasingly important role.

Web 2.0 can help in two ways. First, it enables organisations to engage with customers more directly, capturing community knowledge which can be used to enhance products, processes and user experience. For example, if you have ever shopped for books or gifts online, you know that the process is enhanced by product recommendations created by combining the feedback from other shoppers.

Second, it supports the business itself through improved team communication and collaboration. Especially in our organisation, blogs, wikis and popular Web 2.0 sites such as Ning and Facebook are used alongside more traditional communications vehicles such as e-mail and collaboration sites to support the way we work.

Web 2.0 will only deliver value in a business if it emerges from the bottom-up, from the needs and wants of users, rather than being designed from the top down as is typically the case with application development projects. Businesses must first understand how Web 2.0 will fit their organisation’s culture and business models and then invest the time to understand the best way to make use of participative technologies.

So how does a company “manage a Web 2.0 strategy”? Some things to consider are:

Take your company’s culture into account – how do you communicate and interact today (both internally and externally) and how could this be enhanced through the use of participative technologies? How do you then encourage people to participate?

Realise that transparency is created with Web 2.0 applications and be prepared to listen and react to this information, both negative and positive. What new processes must you implement in order to respond to, and take advantage of, this new wealth of information?

Deploy a flexible, secure IT infrastructure to support it. This is crucial, as successful Web 2.0 applications can create exponential demand for compute power and network bandwidth. The IT architecture needs to be designed to accommodate rapid scale-out in terms of processing power and data storage and rapid scale-up in terms of the number of users it supports. There are implications on cost, space and power in the choices that you make and these need to be modelled up front. The last scenario you want is to invest in building a successful site or application, only to have to take it off-line for re-architecting when the infrastructure can’t scale to match your success.

Finally, I’d advise adhering to open standards and technologies and the incorporation of open source software where possible. Not only will this reduce the cost of your Web 2.0 project, it will give you far more flexibility and choice in the medium to long term.

In summary, Web 2.0 affects every organisation. We have only begun to see what the internet is capable of delivering. Start-up companies and Fortune 2000 customers are leveraging the network to use, enable and provide services. There are more then 1bn devices online today and more then 5bn yet to connect. For consumers and for the business landscape, there is opportunity everywhere.

Kim Jones is president and managing director for Sun Microsystems, UK & Ireland
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008