by Bangkok Post Business

In the last article I looked at how the evolution of Web 2.0 has coincided with a seismic shift in the way that businesses view the use of technology as an enabler for them to achieve their organisational goals and objectives. In particular, Web 2.0 technology has opened a way for corporate and individual knowledge-related needs to merge to some extent, and for individuals and organisations to manage knowledge in new and smarter ways.

In the last few years the use of social networking tools by young people has become almost universal. In 2008, research by the Pew Group in the United States showed that more than 75% of online adults between the ages of 18 and 24 had a profile on a social network site; the figure has almost certainly increased since that time. However, probably more revealing was that the same research showed that only 10% of online adults between the ages of 55 and 64 had a similar profile. It is not so much a generation gap now, more a "use of technology" gap.

But which generation is going to guide and determine the look of workplace technology for the next 10 to 20 years? Certainly not the 55- to 64 year-olds. However you look at it, a social networking revolution is well under way, bringing with it changes that will have a significant impact on the way we work.

In fact, those changes are already happening, and the most ubiquitous of the social network revolution’s tools, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have partially found their way into the workplace, in both the private and public sectors. Recently President Barack Obama used YouTube to deliver a "fireside chat" to his nation.

This doesn’t mean that traditional media, such as television and radio, are no longer useful; of course they are, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. However, the President’s use of YouTube shows that communicators have understood that to reach out and talk to those born in the last 20 years, traditional media are no longer the only or best option available.

Many governments are beginning to position themselves to become the beneficiaries of these new technologies. The US government’s Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, has said that "helping federal employees find the path to innovation" would be one of the four pillars that would drive his technology agenda.

Reading between the lines, this is partly about giving people access to technologies that can help them to become more innovative. Another example is the UK, where the government is looking at new proposals for their primary school (Grades 1 to 6) curriculum that would require, "children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, webcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication".

The General Services Administration in the US has already taken a proactive approach by signing agreements with a number of Web 2.0 technology vendors such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo and blip.tv, in order to make it possible for federal agencies and departments to use these new-media tools. However, these involve only procurement and do nothing about the providing ground rules for use of the technology. It is up to the individual agencies and departments to figure out their own security and legal requirements for offering such tools to their employees, and many already have, allowing employees to post, share and comment on videos and photos on the Web.

Of course the rules of engagement for Web 2.0 technology are not fully understood yet, and organisations are going to discover that the use of Web 2.0 technology encourages a more open and contributory kind of interaction, rather than a passive and purely receptive one as of old.

The ability to shape and control the message through communication media is not going to be there in the same way going forward.

An example of the trend can be found in what happened at Canada Post recently. Someone there thought it would be a good idea to have a senior manager use YouTube to address the workforce on an issue that was causing unrest, and in order to avoid the possibility of a threatened labour walkout. The company duly produced a video and posted it on YouTube. Unfortunately, as this work was then in the public domain, the union took the video and edited it, keeping the same content but adding its own text to various passages in order to refute the points being made. In other words, the union used the executive’s own words to make a case for a course of action directly in opposition to what she was intending.

Nothing wrong or illegal in that, but it highlights that the old ways of communicating information to people need a rethink.

In the next article in the series I’ll take a further look at the social-network media aspect of Web 2.0 and how it is affecting the way that we collect and exchange knowledge as individuals and organisations.

[Source] Software Outsourcing Blog Section:  http://www.unisoftchina.com  ；http://www.techomechina.com