The Economist Intelligence Unit reported that Web 2.0 has moved from buzzword to reality in many of the world’s largest corporations. They conducted a survey of 406 senior executives worldwide and found that 79% of respondents see the collaborative web as a way to boost revenues and cut costs. They said that, perhaps the most interesting finding is that a full 85% of C-suite executives see the sharing and collaboration aspects of Web 2.0 as an opportunity to increase revenue and/or margins, versus 75% of middle management. Nothing like having top down sponsorship delivered to a largely already convinced group of middle managers. This top down effect also extend to the view that Web 2.0 is transformative, affecting all parts of the business (35% versus 28%) and is making a significant impact on the company’s business model (41% versus 22%).

Read more at The FASTForward Blog…

Four IBMers, Joan M. DiMicco, David R. Millen, Werner Geyer, Casey Dugan recently published, Research on the Use of Social Software in the Workplace [pdf]. It focused on their Beehive social networking website behind IBM’s firewall. Beehive was launched in 2007 by IBM Research as an internal social network site for IBM employees designed to blur the boundaries of work and home, professional and personal, and business and fun.

IBM Research is looking at four main areas: understanding adoption, usage patterns, motivations, and impact. This position paper gives a brief overview of the key findings from last two: motivations and impact on the workplace. The found that within a company intranet’s protected environment, employees choose to reach out on Beehive to new people rather than only connecting to those they know, which is different than behavior reported on Facebook. They also found that employees also share personal details that have not appeared with any significant frequency within IBM on other enterprise social software tools, such as intranet social bookmarking and blogging.

Read more at The FASTForward Blog…

According to Forrester, social networking tools and internal wikis will have the greatest impact on workplace collaboration (see Forrester Projects Which Enterprise Web 2.0 Collaboration Technologies Will Grow, Which Will Decline). Technologies such as forums and RSS have a future in the enterprise but are currently underused, while podcasts have a limited future as an enterprise tool to increase productivity and enhance collaboration.

The study is the latest in the TechRadar series, Forrester’s research methodology used to predict the success of a set of related technologies over the next decade. The enterprise Web 2.0 analysis provides insight for two roles: Information & Knowledge Management professionals and Vendor Strategy professionals.

“Web 2.0 collaboration technologies solve problems that enterprises have today, but most companies have not used these tools anywhere near their potential. This new research illustrates to enterprise users where the smart money is invested and where to place their strategic bets. In the current economic climate, Forrester believes collaboration tools can save enterprises operation costs by getting people and processes together quickly and efficiently.” Gil Yehuda, senior analyst, Forrester Research

“While so much of the buzz around Web 2.0 has focused on the business-to-consumer market, the greatest opportunity today for vendors is in the business-to-business collaboration space. Some Web 2.0 collaboration technologies have shown a faster-than-normal life cycle, so it is critical for vendors to take stock of the enterprise tools that have the greatest long-term potential and invest wisely in those technologies.” Oliver Young, analyst, Forrester Research

Via IntranetBlog.com.

The Live Blog interface for micro-messaging (also referred to as microblogging) is a Traction skin that can be applied to any project. Live Blog incorporates the micro-messaging technology that’s been made popular by web services such as Twitter and Pownce.

Live Blog is an automatically updating browser window that allows users to type a brief note from wherever they are (a traditional browser or mobile device such as an iPhone) which will appear as a highlighted entry within seconds to all users who are monitoring that project.

Live Blog makes it simple to share brief notes connecting groups of people. You may already be familiar with these models:

1) Instant posting and response - the Chat or IM model

2) Micro blogging and social messaging - the Twitter or Facebook model

Live Blog is implemented as an AJAX enabled TeamPage skin so conversations are near-synchronous. That means what you say gets pushed out to everyone watching the Live Blog seconds after you post.

Because the interaction is supported in Traction, conversations you might otherwise have in IM or Twitter can take place securely within a TeamPage context with a rich content, tagging and discussion model. A Live Blog note on a critical issue can easily be tagged and referenced for followup, found in TeamPage search, or disseminated though Traction TeamPage notification channels such as IM, email, email digest or RSS stream.

Traction’s new Live Blog technology allows enterprise users to:

• - Share brief updates to stay in touch securely with customers and colleagues anytime and from anywhere
• - Keep in touch with product, sales and support teams while getting work done
• - Connect internal teams and development partners, suppliers and customers working on projects that span the globe
• - Easily raise and discuss issues that need quick attention
• - Use separate Live Blogs to work with individual clients (like a law firm) where privacy is a necessity
• - Leverage TeamPage’s security, search, comment, social tagging and notification features to power Live Blogs and flag issues for follow-up action

Watch a movie here which explains how Live Blog is used and configured: