ReadWriteWeb

Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it's not Gen Y that's getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.

Forrester's analysis is that despite their different view of technology, Gen Y, Millennials, or whatever you want to call those 29 and under, don't yet have the clout within organizations to make real change. The same Gen X employees who are the fastest growing demographic in Facebook are the ones getting management to accept new technology as more than a fad.

The Dachis Group, an agency founded by former Razorfish CEO Jeff Dachis and backed by Austin Ventures, has made its first acquisition. Late Tuesday night the company announced it has bought the London-based consultancy Headshift, giving Dachis Group an international reach for the first time.

Dachis and Headshift offer large corporations advice on technology strategy, specializing in the social technologies that have taken the consumer Web by storm and are slowly but surely moving into the enterprise. Both agencies have been leaders among a cadre of consultancies advising corporate entities as diverse as the BBC, Intuit and Coca-Cola.

Late last week Socialtext's Michael Idinopulos wrote a post with some interesting advice for anyone looking to start a social software implementation in the enterprise: skip the pilot. His argument was that since the new breed of enterprise 2.0 tools are about human interaction, something which changes dramatically at scale, then small pilots were not a useful barometer of future success or failure.

Idinopulos admitted that pilots are great for traditional IT, which revolves around a set of actions that do not change much whether it's 10 or 10,000 people (think billing or adding leads in a CRM). We agree that in any kind of collaboration, the shift from 10 to 10,0000 causes dramatic change. But that leaves an open question: do you still use pilots for your wikis, blogs, and other social software implementations, or are they a waste of time?

Google has given free versions of Apps to colleges and universities for two years now. But as part of the "Going Google" campaign, they've pushed extra hard on educational institutions to adopt Apps. Why?

Even if the core of Google's strategy has been to entice paying enterprises over to Apps, giving away professional-quality email hosting and other solutions to students is the classic "hook 'em while they're young" strategy. From elementary school to college, Google is flooding the market with their products in the hope that these kids will demand it when they enter the workforce.

In a new report studying social networking on intranets, Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen asserts that despite broad awareness, real execution of Web 2.0 in the enterprise is still rare at this point.

We've noted Nielsen's skepticism when it comes to Web 2.0 in the past, but it's not outlandish to acknowledge that the enterprise moves slowly to adopt new technology. By doing so, the entire industry receives a sobering reminder of just what it takes to make change happen in business.

On Tuesday, consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton won the Open Enterprise Innovation Award at the 2009 Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

The portal that garnered them the accolade, hello.bah.com, has shown impressive adoption within Booz Allen, especially for a firm that's 90 years old. Since being rolled out in August 2008, it's been taken up for daily use by 40% of the 21,000-strong workforce, according to Walton Smith, who's worked as an evangelist for it.

But by now, the flurry of activity around the conference has subsided, and many are left wondering just what about Booz Allen's enterprise 2.0 initiative makes them innovative? What led their social software implementation to be successful, and what patterns and practices can we imitate? After taking a look, here are five characteristics that ReadWriteWeb feels were key to the success of hello.bah.com

Effective user adoption is the absolute best predictor of enterprise software success. That was one of the key takeaways for me from the OpenAir User Conference this week.

According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed it as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption.

A one year follow up on a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US has found that familiarity with and use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking has skyrocketed in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007. 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research performed the study for Inc. Magazine and their findings confirm what previous studies have argued as well: social media use is now a major, mainstream activity.

Steve Outing wrote a very good article at Editor and Publisher on Friday about the need for cultural change inside the newpapers around the US (found via the wonderful CyberJournalist.net). That article got me thinking that people in many different industries probably hear many of the same objections to new, social media and online tools. ("It takes too much time, conversations online are insipid" etc.)

I decided to make a list of the Top 10 Objections to New Online Tools and What You Can Say in Response. I surveyed my nearly 1300 friends on Twitter and got all kinds of thoughtful replies.