FreshNetworks Blog

The latest edition of the McKinsey Quarterly includes the results from their global survey of Web 2.0 in firms. The survey documents the developments that we see at FreshNetworks - more firms are using more Web 2.0 tools for more complex business purposes. McKinsey go even further, noting that a significant finding from this year’s survey is that:

Companies that are deriving business value from these tools are now shifting from using them experimentally to adopting them as part of a broader business practice.

Web 2.0 tools are starting to enter the mainstream in business, those who trial them find them beneficial and want to look at ways they can use these tools across their business, helping them meet multiple aims.

If you’re interested in some of the detail of the McKinsey study, I’d suggest you go to the article on their site here (you will need to sign-up, although it is free). However, for me the most interesting findings are:

• More community-based tools are growing in their use. In 2008, 34% of businesses studies used blogs (compared with 21% in 2007); 32% used wikis (compared with 24% in 2007)
• Web 2.0 tools are popular both for internal purposes (94% of firms studied) and for interfacing with customers (87% of firms studied). When they are being used for the latter purpose, this is primarily to improve service to existing customers and then as an acquisition tool
• Blogs were more popular in Asia-Pacific and India; social networking particularly popular in North America and China; and, mash-ups and rating more popular in Europe
• The biggest barriers to using Web 2.0 tools are a lack of understanding of the financial benefits (28% of respondents), internal cultural barriers (22%) and lack of skills (17%)

This last point, the barriers to adoption, show the areas where we as an industry need to focus our efforts to help clients. We have written before on this blog about measurement and ROI in online communities and in social media (see posts here, here and here) and it seems that this is the biggest barrier that firms need support with. Perhaps as these firms move from trialling the use of new tools, to using them for specific business purposes, the measurement of how they contribute to these will be easier.

Some more reading

• Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?
• Web 2.0 Design and Internet Marketing
• Analysis: McKinsey’s enterprise web 2.0 survey
• Gartner throws weight behind enterprise Web 2.0