Web 2.0 and business: Early results on perceptions of Web 2.0 and factors influencing its adoption

Web 2.0 is quickly evolving into one of the most important technologies to drive the business world. In about five years, it made its impact by converting the web into a platform for people to assemble and organize. Today it provides powerful tools for business use. Practitioners propose that they can lead to new product and service offerings, change business processes, and achieve remarkable levels of collaboration within and outside an organization. This research examines over fourteen hundred end-user responses and presents some early results. It empirically verifies the perceptions about the benefits of Web 2.0 and finds four factors that may influence the adoption of Web 2.0. Benefits like collaboration, process innovation, and cost reduction find strong recognition. The four underlying factors that appear to influence Web 2.0 adoption are Business improvement, Workplace collaboration, Innovation, and Personal use.