Digg
Personal use: Digg is a social news website made for people to
discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by sub-mitting and accessing links and stories. Voting stories thumbs-up
or a thumbs-down is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively
called digging and burying.
Business 2.0 use: Many organizations have found this to be a
good way to track the most interesting advances in technology
or the most useful business news. Large organizations can create
their own internal version for sharing what employees consider
to be the most useful information.
Ask yourself: Could we use Digg, or our own internal version, to
get people to share their most interesting and valuable web-based
information with one another?
Delicious
Personal use: Delicious is a social bookmarking web service
for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. It uses a
non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each
of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms.
Business 2.0 use: Business users can share their most useful
websites with coworkers or business partners. If a customer
purchases a product, sellers could share relevant bookmarks that
keep the customer coming back for more information and hope-fully more products.
Ask yourself: Could we use Delicious to share important
new web sites faster within our organi-zation or with our customers?
Visual Communications
Personal use: Visual
Communications, unlike
traditional videoconferenc-ing, uses your desktop,
laptop, and soon your smart
phone to hold a quick, anytime,
anywhere videoconference with one
or more other people. Travelers who
must be away from home are us-ing their laptops in hotel rooms
with broadband access and free
software such as Skype and
AIM to communicate with family
and friends to enhance their personal connection.
Business 2.0 use: Businesses are discovering the power of
Visual Communications to enhance the connection with their sales
force, business partners, and customers.
Ask yourself: Could we use Visual Communications to enhance
communications internally and externally?
Purely Business 2.0 tools
Wiki
A Wiki is a collaborative web page or collection of web pages
designed to enable anyone to create a quick web page that allows
visitors to search the Wiki’s content and edit the content in real time,
as well as view updates since their last visit. Wikis are often used to
create collaborative websites and to power community websites. On
a moderated Wiki, Wiki owners review comments before making
additions to the main body of the topic. Additional features include
calendar sharing, live AV conferencing, RSS feeds, and more.
Ask yourself: Could we use Wikis to enhance internal and
external collaboration?
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-oriented professional networking website
for exchanging information, ideas, and opportunities. There are more
than 35 million registered
users spanning 170 indus-
tries actively networking with each other. For
example, large insurance
companies use LinkedIn
to foster networking with
their independent sales
representatives. HR professionals from all over
the world could use LinkedIn to share best practices.
Ask yourself:
Could we use LinkedIn to expand our organiza-tional network for enhanced knowledge sharing?
“Ask yourself: Could we use Cloud Computing and Software
as a Service to streamline our
IT needs?”
Cloud Computing and Software as a Service
In Cloud Computing, some or all of the storage, software, IT
processes, and data center facilities you
use can exist on your provider’s
server, which is maintained and
cared for by your provider, giving
you 24/7 access from any device
anywhere. The cost of upgrad-ing hardware and software,
maintenance, and asso-ciated IT labor costs
can be dramatically
reduced or eliminated.
Currently, the ideal
organization would be
any size company that’s
facing big investments
in computing and com-munications infrastructure.
For example, Amazon.com can give you an
entire e-commerce back end. Software as a Service
(SaaS) such as SalesForce.com has a CRM pack-age, SciQuest has a spend management package, and
Google, Microsoft and others each have their own suite
of offerings.
Ask yourself: Could we use Cloud Computing and Software as
a Service to streamline our IT needs?
Gain a new competitive advantage
By reframing the use of social networking technology, compa-
nies can increase communication, collaboration, problem solving,
and competitive advantage with little cost. Remember, many of
these tools are free or nearly free, making them accessible to even
the smallest of businesses. Therefore, the sooner you embrace
Business 2.0 and put it to work for you, the faster you can penetrate
new markets and win the lion’s share of business.
© 2010 Burrus Research Associates, Inc.
