WEB 2.0 Technologies in Organisations using Knowledge Management

    In today's market competition is on peak every product you see would have a competitors on the other hand, companies need to understand the importance of effectively managing their knowledge to gain competitive advantage. Years ago, employees would stay with a company for many years before moving on while many planned upon a lifetime of dedication to their organisation. But in today industries, it is not uncommon to find employees who stay no more than 3 to 4 year without looking for a change. Indirectly company is losing the intellectual capital.

    Web 2.0 emerged in 2004 by O'Reilly Media as a way to explain the revolution that was being observed in the web since its start. "Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences." O'Reilly, T., (2004)

    In my opinion Web2.0 technology in a business background will be more accepted by knowledge management systems, as employee will be already is comfortable using these tools in their personal time. So it won't be a new technology for employees to use in their companies. Web has become a universal platform for all to develop. If business could create interactive networking sites for the employees like Facebook, It would reduce the gap between employee's interaction, communication and knowledge sharing across organisation would increase.

    Implementing web2.0 in an organisation is termed as Enterprise 2.0. It enables the internet technologies to work within the organisation which is termed as Intranet. There are several technologies used in enterprise 2.0 where knowledge management is just a part of it. Knowledge management is compared with Web2.0 in four aspects; they are Conceptual, Principles, Functional abilities of tools and applications and Organisational Culture. Levy, M., (2009)

    Following are the few technologies compared to knowledge management attribute,

Web 2.0		Knowledge Management attribute
WIKI		Web content management tools are part of the knowledge management toolbox. Following are the other known tools CMS, Stellent and Interwoven
Blog		It can be used for sharing new knowledge or posting articles which can be of any incident occurring can help others to avoid the problems.
Tagging [Folksonomy]		Tags narrow downs the searching context which help consume time.
Social Computing		Communities of Practice

Note: Ideas for table taken from Levy, M., (2009)

    Web2.0 would bring revolution in the organisation on the KM area where if implemented successfully will definitely help companies to gain value and gain competitive edge. For an example one of the call centre company where employees were not staying for long, it's due to the culture and pressure of work which had created problems. After implementing knowledge management and adding web2.0 technologies it helped the company to create good cultures which keep employees satisfy and by the means of Social Computing an employee was also able to be a part of a community which would help further growth or self development of an employee.

Reference

O'Reilly, T., "Web 2.0: Compact Definition?" O'Reilly Radar blog, Available at (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html, 01/04/2009, 2009)

Levy, M., (2009), "Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol 13 No. 1 2009, pp 120-134, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1367-3270