One can argue that something becomes a phenomenon when McKinsey decides to do a global survey about it. That seems to be the case with Web 2.0. According to the survey, the most popular investments are in web services, collective intelligence and peer-to-peer networking (see graph below). Wikis and blogs get far less attention.
I find these results rather interesting. Firstly, web services is not always categorized as web 2.0. In fact, it predates web 2.0 by a few years and represents something more technical and different. Secondly, wikis and blogs are impacting businesses immensly and I wonder why they did not get much attention in this survey. Maybe this is because the respondents were mostly on the IT side and so high up in their organizations that unless a technology cost a lot, it would not appear on their radar.
Also of interest is the number of people using web 2.0 technologies for collaboration within their organizations versus for communication with partners and customers. Managing collaboration internally wins. Now that's an interesting statistic!
Web 2.0 technologies and values are bottom up and user driven. The savvy marketers, HR managers and IT gurus that are most in touch with their customers and employees will be the ones who will know best how to leverage the technologies. The others will probably tell you that web 2.0 is not important or will focus on more technical or positivist solutions.
The report is available for free though registration is required.
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