Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Web 2.0 again!! and Social Networking.

I actually read a lot of the questions coming through on linkedin.com via igoogle.
As we discussed in some of my earlier posts the term Web 2.0 appears to have different definitions depending on who you talk to.

On linkedin, everyone is talking about Social Networking and Collaboration and defining this as web 2.0. (Everything is X 2.0 nowadays as if by putting the number 2 in front of a term we have suddenly and miraculously discovered a new technology)

So now Web 2.0 is social networking which also includes collaborative tools in the business environment.I am an avid user and supporter of these types of tools being it a wiki, blog or networking sites like
linkedin.com

Less focus is placed on line of business applications being transformed by Web 2.0 in particular SaaS. My interest is obviously biased towards this, but I think the success of Web 2.0 collaboration tools within a business organization actually hinges on the adoption of a SaaS mindset first.

By having these SaaS business tools in place first, it gives context and sensible subject areas to Social Networking and colloboration.

A good example I think is Life Science CRM. I read an excellent post today
Scott Monty

Pfizer is partnering with a social networking site and will get access to the thousands of doctors who network there. Now this is something that the Sales reps would love to analyze and review for the zipcodes in their territories and the best place for this would be in their CRM system. Not an easy task if you aren't using a SaaS application. By having it in CRM, it structures what is essentially unstructured information. I can picture one day a Life Science SaaS CRM solution which has a social networking and blog portal for doctors as part of its feature set.
(Although you have to be in compliance with all FDA regulatory requirements.)