While all the cool corporate kids are talking about nothing but Web 2.0 these days, it turns out this brave new world actually scares the heck out of most companies.

A new study from research firm Coleman Parkes found most companies have no formal plans to launch a social media project. The study surveyed 541 business and IT executives in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, including 40 in Canada, and many of those respondents pointed to fear, uncertainty and doubt as the cause of their Web 2.0 reluctance. 


And that's unfortunate, because the study also concluded that Canadian companies which have jumped into the 2.0 pool are seeing improved customer relationships and increases in sales. 

More information on the study, commissioned by IT consultancy Avanade, is here.

More than half of the respondents are reluctant to adopt instant messaging, blogs, wikis and social networking because they fear these tools reduce productivity. And 60 per cent believe management does not understand the potential advantages social media can deliver.

In my opinion, the first belief is incorrect while the second is all-too accurate.

The idea that social networking, etc., is bad for productivity probably stems from its genesis as student-based technology. What boss wants employees spending company time chatting with recently rediscovered high school buddies? But that take on social networking is at least two years out of date. Today, social media sites like Facebook and MySpace offer significant business tools and many companies assign employees to work on building their networks. Almost two years ago IBM launched a virtual presence in Second Life and it is still going strong.

The second concern highlighted by the study - management inexperience - is valid, however. Web 2.0 is new and still seen as unproven by many execs, and because of that they have simply avoided the topic. For those execs, I have two suggestions. First, take some time to learn about this new phenomenon. Backbone’s upcoming September/October issue has stories on the business use of both Facebook and MySpace, and we are running two educational events to congratulate the winners of our recent PICK 20 Web 2.0 round-up.

Second, consider the following finding from the study: Most Canadian companies (83 per cent) believe social networking will come into the business by stealth if it is not proactively managed, but only 16 per cent of Canadian firms have a fully implemented strategy for integrating social computing for employees.

That means social networking will be in play in most Canadian companies, but it will happen in an unstructured and ad hoc way. That doesn’t seem like a good approach to managing an important business tool, does it?

Peter Wolchak