In the words of 80's band David & David: "Welcome to the boomtown, pick a habit we got plenty to go around." Those habits are Web 2.0 addictions these days. And the boomtown, according to this InfoWorld story is Web 2.0.
The venture capital industry funded 167 Web 2.0-related deals in 2006 for a total of $844 million, mostly in Europe and the U.S., according to a March 21 report from the accounting firm Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne. That's more than twice as much money and nearly twice as many deals as in 2005.
But back to what spawned my initial thought. It was the Clearswift survey that raises the paranoia visibility of social computing's impact on corporate America. And I love the headline...
Growing popularity of Web 2.0 sites put corporate information at risk and drains productivity
They should've just put an 800 number right behind it with a link to the infomercial on where I can buy their product. Ok, I realize they're pitching their content filtering products to mitigate privacy risks and data leaks but c'mon. Do they really believe you can lock down this stuff? For you IT'ers, yes I know you can
But let's face it, there's a lot of gray area here. Where do you draw the line between what's personal and business-related? If I have business content (define that for starters) on my Google homepage and someone Twitters, Skypes or IM's me, am I now in no man's land?
Whether I'm on the office network or in the home office, social computing many times is seamless. I can easily go from one workspace to another, regardless of time, place, or device. In fact, most of my services and data are in the cloud anyway. The way I access and use them is part of the way I work..my personal IP. Perhaps I should fight my employer for the rights to my intellectual capital?
More importantly, is anyone thinking about how all the things we web tinkerers bring to an organization? We are experimenters, we are early-adopters. Sometimes we're even bleeding-edge instead of leading edge. Shame on us. Isn't it more a question of common sense? What you wouldn't say around the water cooler probably applies in Johnny's new Ning network.
Personally, I can tell you a lot of what I learned about social media and Web 2.0 was derived from late nights at home, skipping lunch at work, or yes, even on the job in full work mode. That's reality folks. And you know what else? Some of the Web 2.0 stuff I did at work almost three years ago have been fully adopted by former employers. They just thought I was goofing off at work.
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