Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

http://www.suicidemachine.org/# Promises to clear your web 2.0 identity from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Frankly I think we are looking at the Web 2.0 crash. Certainly having social contacts online will survive and help people find the information they need and want. But the 2009 boom of Web 2.0 was probably just due to novelty, and over the coming years we will likely see a drop in ad revenue from Web 2.0 (maybe). But to write Web 2.0 off would be like turning your back on an opportunity to by Google when it first issues (which as I recall a large number of investment writers openly did)

I guess the lesson is that everyone now knows Web 2.0 concepts. So what useful stuff do you do with it. I think a facebook like SharePoint would be extremely useful, with a MySite home page connecting to ones social and work network.

I myself stopped used Web 2.0 as a term to describe a concept about 2 years ago, when I heard Microsoft certified domain experts in SharePoint start using it. Its critical to know when to give up on a term or concept.

The thing is public perception matters. For example I found in 2007 and 2008 getting companies to look at SharePoint's wiki was very hard because of all the bad press about Wikipedia in the general public. Now despite the bad press Wikipedia has created something which will be very long lasting and useful, but because Wikipedia has so many problems in public it might have killed the wiki tool as a generally business tool. On the other hand the fact wikis are so hard to work with may have killed them.

The same might happen with Web 2.0, if you sell it by saying "Web 2.0" Today people might associate this with disaster zones like MySpace, Flickr, or the ever more hated yet used Facebook. You need to sell the Web 2.0 features not with jargon but with actual benefits.

Get people in touch with their team members in real time and offline on one window.

Collect feedback from colleagues on matters.

Keep tracking of what you and everyone else on your team is doing.

As I have written before though "web 2.0" can be very dangerous. If you culture has some bullies who impose a their view of reality they will use discussion boards, comments and blogs to further promote their hold over the company and very likely introducing these tools will kill discussion and learning.