What Do We Mean by Web 2.0?

Although at an early stage, a family of powerful Web-based technologies are being adopted by some organisations to:

• encourage greater collaboration among employees, customers, suppliers and partners;
• give customers, business partners and employees greater opportunity for more authentic forms of 'voice' on issues that matter to them;
• help organisations, employees and potential employees learn about each other, and share their knowledge and experiences to create organisational learning.

These 'social and sociable' media technologies have come to be known as Web 2.0, following the introduction of the term in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, a media guru. The most highly publicised of these technologies among HR professionals are blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn and virtual worlds such as Second Life.

This is perhaps even more important than normal to be clear on our use of terms and our understanding of the key features of Web 2.0, why it is different from earlier, Web-based applications and what its potential is forecast to be. So, we begin by setting out a working definition in Box 1 below, culled from a number of sources.

Box 1: Web 2.0, a working definition for HR professionals

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Web 2.0 is different from the earlier Web 1.0, which focused on the one-way generation and publication of online content. Web 2.0 is a 'read—write' Web providing a democraticarchitecture for participation, encouraging people to share ideas, promoting discussion and fostering a greater sense of community. In this sense it is a 'people-focused' Web, embracing core elements of the philosophy and practice of modern human resource and people management — conversations, interpersonal networking, personalisation, authentic voice and individualism.

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The important points to take away from this definition are the differences with earlier non-interactive, Web-based technologies and the people-centred, rather than organisation-centred, nature of these new technologies. To elaborate a little, experts in the field have identified five characteristics of Web 2.0 that have enormous importance for HR. These are described in Box 2.

Box 2: The characteristics of Web 2.0

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Participation and collaboration

Web 2.0 is driven by increased participation and collaboration among users, most obviously apparent in social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, wikis and multimedia online gaming. Indeed, it is these so-called 'network effects' that define Web 2.0 and make it so valuable — see case illustrations later.

Openness

Web 2.0 has come about because of a spirit of openness as developers and companies increasingly provide open access to their content and applications. Good examples include the emergence of open source course material, online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia and Web browsers such as Firefox and Google's 'Chrome'. For some writers, it is this open source element that is the most important feature of Web 2.0, differentiating it from in-company attempts to deploy social media behind their firewalls — so-called Enterprise 2.0.

User control

Web 2.0 users control the content they create, the data captured about their Web activities, and even their identities — they can choose to be anonymous, create virtual identities or present their real selves. In the case of the latter, Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister and Barack Obama, the newly installed President of the United States of America, have done broadcasts on YouTube which have been viewed around the world.

Decentralisation and democratisation

Web 2.0 is also a decentralised 'architecture', relying on distributed content, applications and computers rather than a centralised system controlled by managers or IT departments. While decentralisation is necessary for wider participation, openness and positive network effects, it is also the most worrying aspect of Web 2.0 among many HR professionals because of the potentially damaging effects of brands through the organisational misbehaviour of 'ranting' bloggers and because they are not able to control corporate messaging.

Standards

Universal standards provide the basis for Web 2.0. Common interfaces and creating and accessing content are the things that allow the decentralised system to be created. This includes technologies such as XML, Java and media streaming to MP3 players and mobile phones to help create content available to everyone, as is the case with e-learning.

Modularity

Web 2.0 is built from many components from the bottom-up rather than top-down, which gives it greater flexibility. For example,traditional programmes of learning through university degrees are built top-down, with a 'programme, course and module' structure designed in that hierarchical order. However, it is equally possible and desirable to build from the bottom-up, creating highly flexible e-learning courses from standard 'chunks' of learning (so-called learning objects) to create modules and then courses, according to the individual needs of learners. In the same way, different Web 2.0 applications and mechanisms can be aggregated and re-mixed to create flexible outcomes that suit user needs. Personalised Google home pages are good illustrations of this characteristic.