Social Media Impacts - Inside, Outside, Upside-Down

A convergence of factoids and experiences over the past few days… Enterprise 2.0 is currently underway… I read an interesting article in TechTarget about the rise of Web 2.0 tools within corporations… And, today I attended a “Thought Leadership Forum” in Boston (hosted by VMS), in which some attendees in the Healthcare industry weighed in quite thoughtfully on the perils of the blogosphere.

The essence of both the TechTarget article and the Enterprise 2.0 show seems to be that the 2.0 “stuff” is finding its way into corporations without any direct guidance or acknowledgment of the IT groups.

The TechTarget article cited an IDC survey in which ~45% of corporate respondents are at least experimenting with blogs, RSS, wikis, etc.

But according to an anecdotal survey of the 60–odd corporate IT managers who were learning of the study, “exactly zero raised a hand when asked how many currently worked at a company that uses any Web 2.0 technologies.”

This reminds me of an apocryphal tale about the rise of the PC in Corporate America: many users knew that the PC would be a boon to their workaday efforts, but there was not an IT budget in those days … so they’d requisition a desk so that they could instead surreptitiously purchase a desktop PC!

Web 2.0 is invading Corporate America and will not be stopped. Users are creating wikis, willy-nilly clicking .exe files on MySpace pages, testing out cool new widgets for their browsers, etc. Hopefully this will not create a fresh wave of security breaches!

The challenges are bigger than Technology, too. Consider my beleaguered Healthcare colleagues at today’s roundtable: These were thoughtful people, and professional communicators, who intuit the value of conversations with all stakeholders … But, the blogosphere still scares the heck out of ‘em. And for good reason.

Here’s a sample of the horror stories …

• One hospital hosted a blog platform for patients, under their own brand … and found that patients who blogged about their treatments would find their physicians’ prognoses and therapies second-guessed by commenters. Some of those comments could be valuable… but some could just as easily convince the blogger (or other readers) to try alternative medical approaches (including some whacky ones). Since these blogs and comments were hosted/branded by the hospital, issues of malpractice could easily crop up!

• Another horror story: clinical trial patients who un-blind a blind study by blogging publicly about the pills they are experimenting with, the side effects, etc. It takes billions of dollars to run a successful clinical trial: a set-back like this one could keep a promising drug off the market if it tampers with the pharmaceutical company’s risk/reward assumptions of the trial process.

• Yet another: if you find yourself laid-up in the hospital next to a blogger, they could inadvertently expose your identity and condition as they recount their own stay. That’s a HIPAA violation, for which the hospital could be held accountable.

The interactive tools and self-publishing capabilities of the Web 2.0 world are amazing and the benefits far outweigh the perils. I certainly don’t want to sound like Chicken Little, since I am a big advocate for “all things 2.0.” But it would be irresponsible to not admit that we still have almost as much to worry about as to crow about.

Continue reading here: Beware The Blabosphere: 7 Simple Rules for Freelancers Who Blog

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