Why are we still blurring Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts?

I spent part of this week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference [1] in Boston. As I watched a number of presentations, I kept thinking about a skit Mike Myers used to do on Saturday Night Live [2] years ago on which he ran a store called 'All Things Scottish.' Customers invariably mixed up Scotland and Ireland, and in an annoyed tone, he would whip down a map and with a pointer scream, "Scotland, Ireland, water, different!"

A number of people didn't seem to be understanding that there is a huge difference between Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0. You would think that, at a conference focused on Enterprise 2.0, the distinction between the two would be inherently obvious. Yet some speakers seemed to blur the two concepts. At times I felt like the Myers character wanting to pull out a graphic and scream: "Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, open web, different!"

Web 2.0 encompasses services like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. These tools are on the open web and while they certainly have legitimate utility in my view for any company, I could see how some conversations that happen every day in any business, need to be kept safely behind the firewall.

That's precisely where Enterprise 2.0 comes in. It provides a safe place to undertake these same types of social activities behind the firewall. When you bring in Enterprise 2.0 tools, you are doing so because you want the control you lack on the open web. The whole idea behind Enterprise 2.0 is designing social media tools in an enterprise context.

If your goal is to use these tools to collaborate and share information among employees, you have to be able to keep certain information confined inside the organization. For instance, if you're a software company working on your next big release, you don't want your engineers blabbing about it on software engineer forums. Enterprise 2.0 tools give you an outlet to have these discussions without these concerns.

Enterprise 2.0 may be revolutionary in terms of its potential to change the way we think about how businesses operate internally--to share information instead of hoarding it, to make information the focal point instead of documents, to allow communication that breaks down traditional hierarchies--but it doesn't fundamentally change the basic way companies do business in a capitalist system. In the starkest terms, as one speaker put it, they are each essentially trying to destroy their competitors and gain the most market share. Obviously sharing your company secrets in public forums would not be a smart thing to do under those circumstances.

Certainly, the tools that I spent the better part of three days exploring and learning about provide an environment to conduct business in this new fashion. But can we be clear that Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 are distinctly different concepts? Don't make me pull a Mike Myers on you. - Ron [3]