Enterprise 2.0 is a great term, because its meant to be a catch all phrase for so much -- customer relationships, content, knowledge, projects, files, e-commerce etc... However, my point today is not to address what it is (or isn't) but rather to elaborate on how to make enterprise web deployments successful, and in particular, what we can learn from the social web, in this regard.
Enterprise 2.0 systems tend to be systems of record, and are therefore record-centric. Records can provide a great context for information -- who created it, what accounts they're related to, their status or category. However, until recently this data was both accessible and useful only to users with access and a knowledge of the system. Through social processes like Salesforce.com Chatter and initiatives by other vendors to "feed enable" their applications (Yammer, Podio, Basecamp), it is now possible for typical business users to easily access and get value from these systems using new social, collaboration features.
The graphic below illustrates the different forms of content available in the enterprise and potentially what is possbile through simple social enablements like share, "like" and follow.
We see enterprise data on two axis, one is shelf-life, or the amount of time content may be relevant to an organization (we can think of "long-lived" content as organizational "knowledge" like best practices, document templates or old proposals) and the other axis is the community that it is relevant to -- stretching from individuals to the whole enterprise. The illustration above attempts to show different points on a collaboration continuum and also suggests that with social capabilities enabled (like sharing, following, "liking" and tagging) real-time access, relevance and use of enterprise 2.0 data/systems becomes more collaborative and even more likely.
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