Web 2.0: Barriers to Adoption

Web 2.0: Barriers to Adoption by Stan Garfield

Web 2.0 is emerging with social computing tools such as blogs, wikis, social networking, social tagging, podcasts, mashups, and RSS. It offers great potential for collaboration, but it has to overcome problems:

It is not a panacea nor a substitute for other, less exciting, but tried-and-true, knowledge management approaches.
Many older people have difficulty adopting it - they do not subscribe to RSS feeds, comment on blogs, or use Facebook. Internal blog, wiki, and RSS usage within large organizations often represents a tiny percentage of the overall population.
Many erroneous assumptions are made about the best use of blogs, wikis, and social networking tools. For example, blogs and wikis are not replacements for threaded discussion forums to support communities. They each have very specific applicability and benefits, but many people blithely declare more universal and indistinguishable roles for each.

Web 2.0 implementation inside of corporations, sometimes referred to as Enterprise 2.0, faces barriers to adoption:

Business management may worry about allowing all employees to express themselves and post whatever they want. They are concerned about people posting negative comments, sharing confidential information, and not adhering to standards and guidelines imposed from the top down.
Many IT departments don't get the idea of Web 2.0. They are trying to cut costs, consolidate, and survive - Web 2.0 seems like a toy to them, not a real IT application. They demand proof of ROI before proceeding, want to limit the number of platforms, and want to tightly control the IT environment.
Adoption by users may be limited to early adopters, technical enthusisasts, and current users of external social computing tools such as Facebook.

Knowledge Management programs should champion collaboration, communities, and connections, using Web 2.0 as a key part of their toolkits. Emerging tools should be studied, piloted and supported, while understanding that adoption will be slow.