Mixed outlook for workplace Web 2.0

Corporate blogs no longer capture the attention of employees as they once did

The various services which fall under the Web 2.0 banner could meet with very different fates in the coming months, according to analysts.

Services such as wikis and social networks will continue to grow, while podcasts and forums could be on the decline, a recent report from Forrester Research suggests.

The company predicts that enterprises will continue to make good use of collaborative wiki pages for projects, while social networks will continue to thrive in the workplace owing to their ability to connect employees with co-workers and contemporaries in other companies.

Other Web 2.0 services, however, will not see continued growth in the workplace, particularly podcasting, according to the research.

While corporate blogs remain popular, Forrester argues that they no longer capture the attention of employees as they did in the past.

A third group of technologies, while not in decline, are also failing to ignite the enterprise market due to under-utilisation, the report found. Among these services are RSS syndication and web forums.

The report suggests that forum use is becoming flat, while RSS systems remain under-used and under-appreciated.

"Web 2.0 collaboration technologies solve problems that enterprises have today, but most companies have not used these tools anywhere near their potential," said Forrester Research analyst Gil Yehuda.

This latest report is the second from Forrester to point to a slowing market for Web 2.0 vendors. Last month, the company suggested that prices for business services could plummet in the near future.