“The British don’t do collaboration”! At least that was my first reaction to Office 2003. Not the response Microsoft was looking for back in 2004. The marketing hype surrounding its launch was all about collaboration. We were told by beaming sales people that the answer to all business worries was joined up departments happily working on Word documents and Excel spreadsheets together. Spend a few commuter hours on a train and you will agree that the British like their double seat - with one space left empty.

But I was wrong. We are all collaborators (just don’t mention the War), and that is why Web 2.0 has many exciting possibilities. Whether we apply a marketing label to it or not, we all benefit from discussing ideas with colleagues, throwing out questions to “mates”, getting feedback from line managers, and much is to be gained from doing so.

Rather than a new version of the Web, Web 2.0 refers to a new way of working with the Internet. It is most commonly associated with the social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace that use the Web to help build online communities of shared interests. It is the phenomenal success of these sites that is causing business to examine their relevance outside of the consumer realm. Just like text messaging was consumer led, so it seems Web 2.0 is going the same route.

The real appeal of Facebook is that it cleverly taps into our psychological need as social animals. At a business level, the same technologies can bring together communities around products and services with shared needs and issues to overcome.

Founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, said recently in an interview (Computing, 15 Nov 2007), “We are already seeing a lot of use of wikis in the corporate environment for loose quick collaboration. Social networking and Facebook itself is already used by a lot of people for business purposes, linking up with contacts they have at other companies”.

It is the potential “loose quick collaboration” that point to business advantages going beyond what Microsoft was thinking of in Office 2003. Traditional corporate intranets and knowledge management systems could soon face a serious overhaul. US retail chains such as Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company and the largest specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States and Canada, accounting for 17% of the market, is currently using the technology to build a supportive community in the workforce.

As with all “new ideas” it may take a while for SME’s to come to the party, but they have much to gain by thinking now of the possibilities. So much knowledge and business information can be locked up in protected silos within a company. Web 2.0 properly harnessed may offer ways of spreading corporate data quickly and efficiently.

Maybe Microsoft understood the British more than I gave them credit for. But I still think we will always want the double seat on the train – one for me and one left empty.