Web 2.0 and Network Intelligence

Abstract

This chapter provides a commentary on the opportunities and challenges faced by organisations as they move towards exploiting Web 2.0 capabilities for enterprise intelligence. Intelligence in this context entails having information about the state of the world, perceiving its significance, and acting appropriately. The adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities along with developments in cloud computing and social computing technologies enables businesses to develop extended enterprise architectures (and thus has implications for business process design and development). The associated challenges for knowledge management are concerned with integration and exploitation of internal and external intelligence in real time to enhance the business value proposition and deliver context-aware services and enhanced client experiences. In addition to capturing micro data about user behaviours on websites, strategies for enterprise intelligence also need to include access to the intellectual, social and relational capital embodied in social networks. Strategies may include a combination of tactics for leveraging network effects, exploiting long tail distributions, engaging external users and clients to provide informational content, and crowd sourcing. The focus on capturing and analysing large volumes of real time data about user behaviours and social network dynamics distinguishes Web 2.0 strategies from those of earlier web-based business strategies, and this entails both access to very large volumes of data (about user behaviours, personal networks and location) and the capacity to mine this data for meaningful patterns. The field is young, and issues of trust, legal, ethical and technical standards are often without precedent, and therefore organisations will need to attend to these in a proactive manner.