Now, having more time to think about predictions in Social Media and Web 2.0 I have a few additional ideas on what the future might bring in the next year. I also asked some of our Navstar employees to give me their predictions, in which they will be posting throughout the remaining weeks left in this year. I have expanded on a few ideas myself to get things started.

Web 2.0

• Google Social Search will be used to make more informed decision. Feels like this is another shot back in the war between the search engines in the previous strike by Microsoft’s Bing.
  

Social Media

• Twitter will still be a strong contender, with the launch of twitter lists recently, users are now able to organize their followers by ideas, location, and other niche groups. This conversation will lead rise to organizations having conversations in public with each other for more transparency.
• Google Wave will continue to be in beta as it has yet to define itself or be completely understood by those who are currently waving. It may take years to fully develop Wave to its potential. If Google Wave had been our original email solution offered by Google years ago, we could be using it in place of many other email forms, including Outlook.

Enterprise 2.0

• I believe 2010 will have great strides for the Enterprise 2.0 revolution in organizations. This revolution will mean more grassroots movements by employees to adopt methodologies to collaborate across the dispersed workforce.
• Sharepoint will have some big contenders in 2010 with Jive’s Clearspace and Social Text as cheaper options with more flexibility. Small businesses will take advantage of the “free” versions of Enterprise 2.0 tools, but only if they allow a Community Manager for the Intranet to be a full time position to foster the growth.
  

Government 2.0

• The Federal CIO and CTO will start leading more with actual Federal policies in place that encourage data sharing, collaboration between agencies, and greener IT.
• Washington will continue to embrace new ideas from Silicon Valley, but the DC Metro area will be thriving with innovation that will be showcased in the Spring Government 2.0 expo. This boom will continue to fuel the change for an open and transparent Government.

Mobile

• With the Android platform making huge strides in the final quarter of 2009, the cell phone gift this season will be either the Droid from Verizon or the Motorola Cliq with Motoblur for T-Mobile.

What are some of your predictions for 2010?

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As part of Enterprise 2.0 for Government, there are aspects of Green IT, Cloud Computing, and Social Media. Utilizing Enterprise 2.0 for our customers, Navstar is lowering operating costs and increasing productivity on the Cloud.

When you think about making your  mission and objectives being more open and transparent, many jump to social media as a solution. As stated, Social Media is a just one component of many in Enterprise 2.0. In future editions, we will be discussing Green IT and Cloud Computing, for now, let us ask what is the difference between Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media?

Simply put its internal vs. external, two different parts, that work separately, but should work together. See the breakdown below for more differences:

As you can see, we put some things in there for levity as at Navstar, we are biased for the Enterprise 2.0 side of the house. The reason, we believe  organizations should think internally before claiming they get it on the Internet. At Navstar, we do practice what we preach in Enterprise 2.0. We use both Open Source and COTS tools to collaborate internally with our dispersed and deployed employees.

You may look cool by having a social media presence to get new recruits and new hires. But if you do not have a productive and collaborative environment behind the firewall, you are NOT going to retain the young bright minds to take your organization into the future.

Our simple advice is this:  Your Enterprise solution and the content generated should be known by your social media strategy team. If you are public organization, who has or hires a marketing team, you should be in control of your brand presence on the internet.  For Government organizations, this position for brand management should be part of your Office of Public Affairs or equivalent. The persons working on this external presence for your organization, should also be a part of the enterprise solution for internal collaboration. The internal collaboration, the Enterprise 2.0 platform your organization leverages to communicate between employees is paramount to the growth of the organization.

At Navstar we specialize in providing Enterprise 2.0 solutions, to contact us for more information how we can transform your organization to be more open, transparent, and collaborative you can contact us at info@navstar-inc.com or leave us a comment below.

We will be following up this post with more about Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, and Web 2.0 as part of our reoccurring series.

Previously posted on http://andrearbaker.com and syndicated on Social Computing Journal. This version has been excerpted and amended from the original versions.

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