Was recently reading a McKinsey and Co. global survey, “How Businesses are Using Web 2.0″ and an Economist Article, “Serious business, Web 2.0 goes corporate” cross-industry survey of 406 senior executives from around the world (41% from C-suite or Board) — and some of the info. below:
WHAT IS WEB 2.0?
The web’s current incarnation is coined as “Web 2.0” (coined by Dale Dougherty and popularized by O’Reilly Media and Media Live International). Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects.
Web 2.0 has a foundation of “core principles, practices, web sensibilities, common threads, and tendencies” that transform the web into a highly functional, collaborative, productive, and engaging platform.
At the same time, traditional web sites that once offered cumbersome pages of static data are developing blogs, podcasts, and customized search engines to deliver the most relevant and timely information on health topics.
Today, 60 percent of home Internet users have broadband access, which is an exceptional channel for transmission of rich media content and digital goods and enables the online usage of collaborative work tools and communications solutions. The following are illustrative activities for this segment of adult Internet users:
- 35 percent have created content and posted it online;
- 8 percent of Internet users keep a blog;
- 14 percent work on their own webpage;
- 13 percent create or work on webpages for others; and
- 26 percent share something online that they created themselves, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos.
BUSINESS TRENDS
Web 2.0 has significant implications for big business across a wide range of industry sectors, including:
- 79 percent of companies surveyed see the collaborative aspects of Web 2.0 as way to increase revenue or margins;
- 47 percent of companies are, or are planning to treat customers as co-developers of products that they constantly improve in a continual “beta” testing phase;
- 31 percent of companies think that the use of the web as a platform for sharing and collaboration will affect all parts of their business;
- 21 percent expect it to lower public relations, marketing, and advertising costs; and
- 17 percent expect to reduce the costs of product and service innovation.
Executives say that they are using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers and business partners and to encourage collaboration inside the company.
- 80 percent use web services;
- 75 percent use them to manage collaboration internally;
- 70 percent say that they are using some combination of these technologies for communicating with their customers;
- 51 percent use these technologies to interface with suppliers and partners;
- 48 percent harness collective intelligence;
- 47 percent use technologies for peer-to-peer networking;
- 37 percent use social networking;
- 35 percent use RSS feeds;
- 35 percent use podcasts;
- 33percent use Wikis;
- 32percent share information through Blogs;
- 21 percent use Mashups”; and
- 20 percent say they are using blogs to improve customer service or solicit customer feedback.
Posted in Baby Boomers, Gen Y, Mashups, Open Innovation, P2P Lending, Rich User Experience, Second Life, Social Media, UGC, Virtual Worlds, Wiki, Wisdom of Crowds, long tail, network effects | Tags: Mashups, Social Networking, Web 2.0, perpetual beta, Gen Y, blogs, wikis, economist, mckinsey and company, O'Reilly Media, photo sharing, file sharing, product innovation, collaboration, RSS feeds, podcasts, customer service
