Web 2.0 is knocking on French companies’ doors

A few words about a recentTNS Sofres survey about the use of web 2.0 in France and user’s expectations.

Just one thing to take into consideration : the following numbers are about web 2.0 users in France that’s to say, according to the survey, 58% of the population. I think it’s even more : people who are “in” can tell they use web 2.0 tools but I think many people use them without knowing whether they use web 2.0 or not.

To make it short, 76 % (out of the 58%) want their companies to create blogs in order they may express themselves. I’d like to know what they mean : do they mean blogging on the internet or on the intranet ?

I also wonder about their purpose. Express themselves…but about what ? I’d like the question to be asked : just to communicate or to work more efficiently ?  Perhaps it’s not the question,  employees will surely take the most of better information fluidity and transversality and develop suitable practices if it makes things easier for them, thats to say, in a politically correct way, improve their productivity (doing the same amount of work with less efforts).

Also interesting, 74% think their company should join the discussions  on the internet where people talk about it.  It suggests me two things : first they like their company more than  usually thought since they want it to  defend itself, second that in people’s minds the frontier between inside and outside the enterprise is  clearly disappearing.  One more thing : french companies are more and more comfortable with using blogs to sell products but very few use this mean to sell themselves, but the best way to join a discussion is to have also its own voice. Perhaps this trend that’s seems much more developed in the US will  soon  become more common in France .

Last point, 41% would like their company to create employee’s communities on facebook. I’m very cautious about that. I’m not sure facebook is the perfect tool for working (sorry to spoil the fun but the purpose is to make work more efficient…even if we also try to make it more pleasant). Sure it’s an efficient tool to discover what social networks are and how to behave on it, but there are many tools that seem more relevant when considering business communities. Anyway, perhaps if they ask for facebook communities it’s because they don’t know about enterprise social software which may be more acceptable for their IT department. One more thing : using blogs to promote a product on the web and using blog within the company are not the same things, they use different levers and you don’t need the same competences for each of them. Choose wisely the people you’ll ask to help you… Remember the enterprise is not the web and your people are employees before being bloggers !

Whatever, it’s more than an emerging trend. It’s not a challenge for tomorrow but a present issue.

Surprised ? What say you ?