It's Official - Web 2.0 has arrived....

..its in the McKinsey Quarterly so it must have

Re Wikis and blogs:

- Executives looking to get the greatest possible value from corporate blogs and wikis can learn from the experiences of online video-sharing sites, which are growing fast—largely because of the contributions of a small percentage of their members.

- Corporate managers must learn how to identify and nurture their core contributors to generate enthusiasm for and interest in wikis and other collective-intelligence systems that rely on contributions from users.

- As these systems begin to take off, managers can give them further momentum by providing tools that make it easy for users to contribute and share. A quality-management scheme can make such efforts more sustainable by helping to ensure that the content is worthwhile.

What is most interesting is this allows some idea of timing from how long it takes something to get from "early adoption" to "mainstream" status (or at least to the point the big consultancies will run with it) - all aboard the Cluetrain (Pub. 1999), as it were. (Though to be fair the technology for running a Cluetrain set only really hit scale in 2003/4)

I guess the most interesting thing is that most of the McK reader base will probably genuinely not know about this stuff. So:

Good news - this serves as "ratification" for the work that small specialist outfits (like us) have been doing for years already.

Bad News - do we have to use language like that......its enough to destroy any enthusiasm for, and interest in, wikis etc

Also, some notes - these systems are not really "top down" tools, they are more democratic - which always sits somewhat uncomfortably in hierarchical structures and more so if they are seen as part of the command and control structure. Also, the surefire way to destroy any in-company attempt to make this work is to dress it up in turgid management New-Speak. Furthermore, old style "quality management systems" to help ensure the content is "worthwhile" are the antithesis of what these systems are about and how they work - it needs to evolve from the users, by the users, for the users - top down enforcement will lead to it being discredited fairly fast. (The article mentions use of Open Source style QM, which is good for homogenous efforts as everyone understands the ambience, but rating/recommendation can be more applicable for more heterogenous networks.)