When It Comes To Apps, Geosocial Is Not Geolocation

The study also differentiates geosocial apps (LBSNs) from the broader picture of geolocation mobile apps, a category that includes apps for navigation, map viewing, local search and local daily deals. Geosocial apps are far more powerful because they provide information about location and the user's social graph.

Social networks do offer location features, but location is just baked in. A few examples include Facebook Places, Google+ check-ins, Twitter posts with locations, Apple's Find My Friends app and the nearly dead Google Latitude. Location, however, is not central to Facebook and Twitter in the way it is to Foursquare and SCVNGR.

Geosocial apps also let you share your location out to your social networks, but many prefer to keep location where it's best used - in the location-based social network. Says Loopt: "There is a level of privacy people enjoy on geosocial apps."

Who Is Actually Using Geolocation Apps?

Forrester finds that people using geolocation apps are influential, connected and young.
Three-fourths of geolocation app users range from ages 23 to 45. Forty-three percent are Gen Y (ages 23-31) and 18% are Gen Z (ages 18-22). Gen X users are using geolocation apps less this year; in 2010, 42% said they used them versus only 32% this year. Not surprisingly, only 1% of seniors ages 67 and older used geolocation apps in 2011.

There is some good news for marketers. Geosocial apps are edging closer to mainstream American demographics. In 2010, users were only 22% female, and the average user's household income was $105,000. This year 37% of geosocial app users are female, and the average user's household income has dropped to $92,000.

Research firm Forrester released a study last week showing global mobile usage trends. In almost every mobile usage aspect, metropolitan China and other Pacific Rim countries lead the way. That includes mobile social usage, work usage and multiple device ownership. Mobile is near an inflection point, changing the way people interact with information around the globe.

In metropolitan China, 46% of people access the mobile Internet, 57% listen to music, 36% play games on their mobile devices and about 33% access social networks. In contrast, near 25% of U.S. mobile consumers use their devices for social networking. Only 11% of European users have accessed social networks through their devices.

In terms of native applications, the United States is by far the biggest consumer of the application ecosystem. Near 90% of smartphone users in the U.S. have downloaded and app within the last three months. The United Kingdom ranked second in the survey with 66% with the next seven countries on the list all coming from the European Union. That would make comparative sense between the U.S./E.U. and the APAC countries. The use rates of the mobile Web (topped by 57% in Japan) are much higher than in the Western countries, which tend to use a lot more applications.

Overall, Forrester says that China has the higher incidence of what they call "super connecteds" - users that "access the Internet at least once a week from their phones and make use of advanced services and applications." See the graph below for more on Forrester's groups of users.

Forrester's report is based off a survey of 330,000 individuals across 18 countries focused on Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific. The report is the result of three surveys: The European, Asia Pacific and North American Technographics Benchmark Surveys.

It is easy to use a Facebook page or a Twitter account to expand a brand's reach. Set it up and start posting and the marketing department hits its "reach" quotient for the quarter. Yet, for business-to-business (B2B) technology suppliers get little value from their social media initiatives. Hence, Forrester recommends businesses augment their social media strategies to become more effective sources of information for making technology-purchasing decisions.

For the time sink that social media can be, those are not great numbers for marketers looking to expand brand awareness. The top sources of influence for decision-makers were websites followed by word-of-mouth from colleagues and then in-person events like trade shows or conferences all. Part of this has to do with the nature of enterprise buying - it is a market ecosystem that does not change quickly. Buyers tend to use the sources they trust and often those sources are going to be other people they know and can physically interact with. Think of it like this: you ask your colleague how he/she solved problem "X." Colleague says they used "X" product. What do you then do? Turn to the Web and look up that companies Facebook page or go to the company's website?

For smaller consumer businesses, Facebook and Twitter can be great ways to increase engagement and hence foot traffic to brick-and-mortar locations. It is cheap and potentially viral. Enterprises are insulated from the viral nature of the social Web because the vetting process of technology decisions lasts longer than the typical Internet meme.

Forrester recommends and integrated approach. Instead of a stand-alone social marketing channel that screams into the Internet ether, tie it up with product and field marketing of the brand. It is a more cooperative and resource-intensive approach, but the results should be greater than setting up camp on Facebook with an "open for business" shingle on the door.

Forrester came up with several guidelines and principles that will help manufacturers, developers and consumers navigate the technological waters that are stretching to the horizon. The research firm defines Post PC as, "a social and technological phenomenon in which computing experiences become ubiquitous, casual, intimate, and physical."

• computing going from stationary to ubiquitous


• computers becoming more casual than formal


• computers going from arms length to intimate


• content manipulation is transforming from abstracted (mouse and keyboard on screen) to physical (touching the screen)

These shifts have been made possible by jumps in technology that were hard to imagine during the heyday of the PC, 10 or so years ago. Computers are smaller and more powerful. Imagine your first IBM computer and that big box it called a hard drive and then look at an iPad. Flash and NAND memory are the biggest culprits behind the slimming of computing. Wi-Fi and 3G/4G permit smaller computers to be useful wherever people want to take them and cloud computing allows content creation and distribution to be accessed from anywhere.

Forrester recommends three stages that developers and manufacturers should take to stay ahead of the Post PC curve. The first is to augment existing products to fit the new paradigm, an example being Internet-aware printers than can print content sent from anywhere. The next stage would be to launch forward-thinking products - the iPad and Microsoft's Kinect fit here - that lead consumers to a type of computing they have never seen before. New technologies and new ways of interacting with devices equals new consumer habits and expectations.

While companies are transitioning, Forrester says to invest in the infrastructure of tomorrow. Create sensors that make possible the Internet of Things where everything is connected. Make rooms, walls and surfaces that are completely interactive. Microsoft and Kinect might have the lead in this department as the room of the future will know when you step in and will be able to act corresponding to your movements. Transition today, dream tomorrow and then go out and build it.

Indeed, Apple's introduction of the iPad changed the game, so to speak, for tablet adoption, and many people are predicting 2011 - or least CES - to be replete with tablet-related announcements.

In tweaking its prediction, Forrester says it has changed some of its assumptions around replacements rates that "we think will be closer to that of MP3 players or iPhones than to that of PCs." Calling these "lifestyle devices," Forrester says it thinks people will more readily purchase replacements and upgrades than they would for a "utilitarian device" like a PC.

Do you agree with Forrester's new figures? Still too conservative? Or has Forrester overestimated the tablet's future success?

According to a report released this week, U.S. consumers are willing "co-creators", a fact that many companies have yet to take advantage of.

Of those consumers willing to co-create, more than half were even interested in co-creation "regardless of the product, service, or brand involved." Of course, it might be better to get those who are actually interested in and willing to purchase your products involved rather than those who aren't, as "consumers with knowledge of or a genuine interest in a product would naturally be inclined toward making that product even better."

A major factor involved in consumers' willingness to participate in online co-creation, of course, was time involvement. Also seemingly obvious is the fact that "incentives drive interest", with 63% saying that their "participating is dependent upon receiving some form of compensation".

Why simply create a product and offer it to consumers when you can take advantage of the two-way street that is the Internet and find out, before putting in too much time and effort, exactly what it is they want in the first place?

According to the the latest report by analyst firm Forrester, many people are looking at the face-value dollars and cents of social media marketing and, put simply, they're doing it wrong. Beyond clicks and coupon redemptions there lies a case for social media marketing that shows its value is well beyond what we see on the surface.

Many marketers can draw a straight line between investments in social media marketing and financial results, but many more cannot.  This doesn't mean social media marketing is ineffective; it just means that marketers have to recognize benefits beyond dollars and cents.  Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets--they aren't reflected on the balance sheet and can't be counted on an income statement--but that doesn't mean they are valueless.  Instead, these are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value that can lead to financial results in the future.

Ray suggests that we look at ROI in terms of four perspectives - financial, digital, brand and risk management. For each, however, Ray says that we should go beyond the surface to evaluate success. Financial ROI, for example, can be measured in terms of online coupon redemption, but also in other ways. He gives the example of online retailer Petco.com. It has found that "Products with reviews have return rates that are 20% lower than those without reviews - and the return rate is 45% lower for products with more than 25 reviews - saving on shipping, restocking, and customer service costs."

Similarly, looking at risk management, Ray notes that "this perspective is not about creating positive ROI but reducing unforeseen negative ROI in the future." By estimating the likelihood and potential cost of PR issues over time, a company could also estimate how much it might save by way of using social media.

As for brand, Ray writes that "marketers don't need to reinvent brand metrics for the social media age" and that evaluating brand online is the same as it was offline. In terms of brand, it comes down to simple measurements - such as awareness, purchase intent, preference and brand association - and whether or not online efforts are helping to improve numbers in those realms.

The final perspective offered by Ray - the digital perspective - is more easily measured. Ray points to efforts by Swanson Health Products, which "improved the visibility of its product reviews to search engines" and subsequently "saw a 163% increase in search engine traffic to product pages".

In the end, the report cautions that not all social media marketing efforts will result in ROI (a term Ray implores companies to use only when speaking of directly measurable financial gain), and that we need to move beyond counting retweets and Facebook fans.

Many marketing investments are not intended to furnish immediate financial results but instead create long-term brand value. The greatest and most valuable brands weren't created in one quarter to the next but with an eye toward building lasting relationships with customers. Smart marketers are coming to recognize the way social media marketing can deliver on those same long-term values and are building programs with strategies and metrics to suit.

In short, Ray seems to be reinforcing a simple idea that many of those who are tech savvy already embrace: Social media, any way you slice it, is worth the effort and the investment.

As Forrester's Augie Ray and Josh Bernoff point out in this new report, 500 billion influence impressions about products on social networks, product ratings sites and blogs, comes close to rivaling other mass media outlets. Online ad impressions, for example, numbered around 2 trillion last year.

Facebook is the venue for 62% of all of these influence impressions, followed by MySpace (18%), Twitter (10%) and LinkedIn (6%). Ratings and reviews make up 32% of these impressions, discussion forums account for 29%, blog comments for 24% and blog posts for 16%. As Forrester's analysts rightly note, it would be easy to dismiss Twitter, given that it only accounts for 10% of all of these influence impressions. These users, however, tend to be the "connected of the connected," which makes Twitter an ideal place to engage mass influencers.

One caveat we would add here, however, is that it is hard to equate a post on Twitter or Facebook with actually impressions. Even though a user can have 1 million followers on Twitter, chances are that only a small number of these followers will actually see this message. It's also not clear how many users actually read blog comments and actively read ratings on sites like Amazon and Newegg. The study's authors acknowledge this in a footnote, but also note that they consider 500 billion impressions to be a conservative estimate.

Who Are the Influencers?

For marketers, of course, it is important to reach these 16% of mass influencers. Forrester divides these influencers into two groups: mass connectors, who maintain very large social networks, and mass mavens, who don't just maintain a large social network, but also have a strong desire to share their knowledge about a certain subject. On average, mass connectors tend to have a slightly higher household income ($98,100) than mass mavens ($89,000). These connectors are also slightly younger (32 vs. 38) and more likely to use the mobile Internet (55% vs. 46%).

Amazon currently has the lead among early eBook adopters. Once eBooks become mainstream, however, Rotman Epps argues, this lead could easily dissipate. While Rotman Epps doesn't talk a lot about hardware devices in her report, the reality is that the Kindle isn't exactly a major step forward in the history of industrial design. Early adopters and 'tech optimists' (as Forrester likes to call them) are willing to look beyond this, but in the mainstream market, hardware design might play a major role in consumers' buying decisions.

The Next Wave of eBook Adopters

According to Forrester, the next wave of eBook adopters tends to read more books per months than early adopters and will probably consist of younger males who are less likely to be married and have children. The problem for eReader manufacturers, however, will be to get this group to buy dedicated devices. Rotman Epps argues that a large percentage of this group will probably read eBooks on devices they already own (like the iPhone), unless prices for eReaders come down significantly (under $100).

It's All About the Price

Forrester's Rotman Epps argues that the high price of eReaders is currently holding back mainstream adoption. A $99 device, Rotman Epps notes, would bring a lot of additional readers to eBooks and eReaders. Most importantly, though, the eBook and eReader market is still in flux. As the next generation of readers is likely to be very different from the previous generation, Amazon will have to work hard to keep its current lead.

Can Amazon Hold On to Its Lead?

Unlike Rotman Epps, however, we think that Amazon will likely be able to hold on to its current lead. After all, it has already forged strong - though sometimes contentious - relationships with most publishers and it currently offers the best integration between its store and its eReader. Barnes & Noble's new eBook store will be a strong contender here, though we have yet to see the Plastic Logic eReader device that B&N will use to compete with the Kindle. Sony, too, is making a major push in the eBook market again, though in terms of mindshare in the US, Amazon and the Kindle are currently the clear leaders (both in the mainstream and among early adopters).

While "Later Adopters May Not Be As Loyal To Amazon.com" makes for a good subtitle, the next generation of eBook adopters is just as likely to consider Amazon as the natural place to go to for eBooks, especially given that the company is already the #1 online retailer for regular books.

What About the B2B Market?

The Forrester report only focuses on consumers. We would argue, however, that there is also a large professional market for eReaders, where the current price isn't too big an issue. Just last week, for example, iRex, an eReader manufacturer that mostly aims for the B2B market, announced the launch of its electronic flight bag for pilots - which is basically an iRex eReader with Jeppesen's charts loaded on them.

What's the Killer Product for eReaders?

The Forrester report argues that once eReaders hit the $100 barrier, users will quickly start to adopt these devices. But is price really the only issue here? Are there any other "killer apps" or devices that could drive mainstream adoption even before $99 eReaders become a reality?

Our own Dana Oshiro just argued in our backchannel that a subscription book club (maybe run by Oprah) could bring a lot of new users to eReaders. And then, of course, there is still the mystical Apple tablet that might make for a great eReader - among other things - and which will surely cost more than $99.

Would You Buy an eReader?

What is holding you back from buying an eReader? The iPhone? The price of the current generation of eReaders? Or the well-designed reading solution called 'the book'?

Kindle DX and Texbooks

The new Kindle DX is geared towards the textbook market, but Forrester warns that universities will be slow to adopt the technology. The schools that Forrester talked to had no plans to encourage students to use the Kindle and the current pilot project only involves a small number of students (50 at Pace, for example). Of course, this is also a classic chicken and egg problem. Textbook publishers will look at the adoption of the Kindle in schools and are unlikely to invest heavily in this technology unless they see a growing market for their content, while students are unlikely to show interest in eReaders unless all of their textbooks are available in this format.

Looking into the Future: Price, Color, Video - and the End of the Chain Bookstore

Forrester also predicts that the eReader market will soon expand beyond books, especially once eInk technology becomes more mature and maybe even allows for color reproductions. Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps expects that newspapers, magazines, comics, and business and personal documents will also soon become more important, especially as other vendors besides Amazon start to produce more compelling devices and user experiences.

We received this report just after we wrote about Google's expected entry into the eBook market this morning, but the report clearly vindicates Google's interest in this market. Forrester thinks that other players like Apple, RIM, Borders, and Barnes & Noble might try to enter this market either with hardware products or by offering distribution platforms. Epps, however, argues that while traditional chain booksellers will try to enter the eBook market, their real estate holdings will weigh them down and make it hard, or even impossible, for them to compete with Amazon.

Overall, we agree with Forrester's assessment of the eBook market. Obviously, we are still very early in the eBook and eReader cycle. It will be interesting to see if any new players will be able to establish themselves in the next year or so, or if we will see a convergence between dedicated eReaders and other mobile devices. Wattpad, one of the larger mobile eBook players, just released an interesting metrics report (PDF), and this company sees about 78% of its eBook usage within the U.S. from iPhone users. Consumers are clearly interested in eBooks, but they are also willing to try out new devices. Even though the Kindle has virtually locked up the market today (at least in the U.S.), the business is still small enough to allow other players to successfully enter the market and be able to conquer the mainstream market.

"Forrester forecasts that US businesses will spend $953 million dollars on Web analytics software in 2014, with an average compound annual growth rate of 17%," the report reads. "Growth will emerge from unexpected places as the value proposition of Web analytics technology oscillates for sophisticated analytics users and becomes more welcoming for new entrants. Ultimately, Web analytics will become part of a broader array of integrated services supporting marketers."

This assessment is undoubtedly bleak, but researchers also identified a few growth factors in the world of web analytics. First, interactive marketing budgets are growing overall. Second, online media is by far the dominant channel. And any money spent on online marketing requires that someone, somewhere be held accountable, that metrics be identified and measures, and that processes be optimized. Forrester also offers the prediction that, given the availability and affordability of web analytics data, a secondary market will spring up to offer services showing companies opportunities for using said data, thus bridging the "action chasm" between knowledge and execution.

In looking at spending, Forrester sees a move away from licensed software and toward hosted web analytics solutions. Service fees will continue to generate revenue for the industry even during turbulent economies; web traffic certainly isn't slowing down, and neither is the need for capturing accurate data about that traffic. They also see this as a vibrant market for agencies and consultancies. Also, new entrants seeking web analytics for sites with moderate traffic will account for most of the growth in this area.

Finally, because of the availability of versatile, free analytics tools, vendors in this industry are (or need to think about) shifting from "a point solution to an underlying service embedded within broader marketing applications," wrote Forrester rep Jon Symons in an email this morning.

"The transformation will only have a positive effect as customer intelligence data will be shared more widely across organizations. Significant challenges remain however, including the need for human analysis of mountains of data, the ability to develop metrics that can tie to larger business objectives, and the necessity to integrate marketing and IT organizations in order to achieve true data integration."

The executive summary is on the Forrester site, and the full report is available for purchase there.

I'll admit to clinging tenaciously to my free AIM account that I've had for many years. Even though I access AIM through such various third-party interfaces as Gmail and Meebo (and even have a hard time thinking of those applications as third-party) I have long since stopped worrying about the service as anything but always there and available, like the air I breathe. However, somebody runs those servers with close to 100% uptime, and it's worthwhile to reflect a moment and realize that AOL has made a commitment for the simple reason of maintaining their online reputation at a very high level.

Sure, we have all heard stories about AOL ISP customer service, and of course seen pictures of AOL CD art, but the numbers tell a different story - that AOL is committed to making sure people who choose them are pleased and have the best possible experience online.

Photo CD Reflections courtesy of Artnow314 on Flickr.

We respectfully disagree with Forrester's recommendations on this topic. In fact, we think that paying bloggers to write about your company is a dangerous and unsavory path for new media and advertisers to go down. We recognize that it's a complicated question, but we don't feel convinced by Forrester's conclusions regarding those complications.

We disagree with these arguments. For more conversation see Jeremiah Owyang's post on the report.

How Much Marketing Would a Marketing Blogger Blog About If A Marketing Blogger Could Market Marketing?

Effectiveness for advertisers is only a consideration because the price point is so low. Chris Brogan, for example, was given a $500 gift card to KMart in exchange for writing about the store. Chris Brogan is a new media rock star who does not need $500 but presumably participated because he's a marketing guy who's willing to experiment with new tactics. He specializes in it, in fact, and we have a lot of respect for him. His new media rock star status, however, does not mean that he has an audience with numbers that are significant to KMart's. His numbers are probably worth more than $500 in large part because of the visibility that the controversy helped stir up.

Even more than Brogan, many of the other participants in the KMart program are marketing bloggers who approach blogging in the style of John Chow, who says plainly: "I make money online by telling people how much money I make online."

In other words, very very few blogs have the kind of audience numbers that would make this practice effective at any but the lowest price point. Of those blogs that do have substantial numbers, we suspect that many of those are blogs about marketing - not general interest or blogs on other specific topics.

Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?

It's hard not to juxtapose this practice with the consolidation and struggles of more traditional media outlets. As Nick Carr might argue, the companies now paying specific bloggers to write about their products used to sponsor whole newspapers - thus subsidizing the kind of investigative reporting that no one will otherwise fund.

Blogging is a beautiful thing. The prospect of this young media being overrun with "pay for play" pseudo-shilling is not an attractive one to us.

Admittedly we say this from a position of privilege, as professional bloggers. Shouldn't everyone be able to get a piece of the action? We are sympathetic to this position, but can't help but feel like it's a morally ambiguous argument. Other than marketing bloggers, it seems that much of the "Pay Per Post" crew is made up of "mommy bloggers." Who would tell a mom with a blog that she doesn't deserve to make a buck, too? It's easy to be high minded about writing as an art when you make a comfortable living doing it.

How is This Different From Any Other Advertising?

One of the other arguments that gets made in favor of "sponsored conversation" is that it's just another form of advertising. The old paradigm of maintaining a wall between advertising and editorial still has a lot of validity, though. It's easier said than done, especially when it comes to tiny operations like almost all blogs are - but the ideals that paradigm offers can't be forgotten because of convenience.

Here at ReadWriteWeb we've recently begun running "sponsored posts" that are written not by our writers but by our advertisers. The best among these have been several by API management company Mashery ("Mashery: Untold Secrets Behind Managing an API", for example). Those posts are undeniably valuable for our readers (readers have submitted and cast more than 100 votes on Digg for several of them) and they are very, very clearly identified as coming from our advertisers. They are an interlude from our regular programming; we maintain a wall between that and the original content our writers create.

That said, if anyone charged for almost anything in this Web 2.0 economy, we would probably regularly receive free software to review. That might get a little more complicated.

When I got my first job at one of the largest tech blogs on the web, I was warned by staff of another of the largest tech blogs to not let the limo rides and champagne from vendors go to my head. That was no exaggeration for that person's blog, but here at ReadWriteWeb we very rarely get offers anywhere near as extravagant! We do sometimes get travel paid for, though. We disclose that if we end up writing about the companies that paid for those expenses - but it's an admittedly complicated situation. We don't accept being "taken out to dinner" individually but we do sometimes attend events where a group meal or travel is covered by a vendor. The bigger those events are, the more interesting they tend to be; the smaller and more personalized events tend to be more nauseating - so we say no!

Except in cases where the most ham-handed PR handlers make it more appealing to do so, it's hard to really think as critically about companies that are treating you nicely and introducing you to their staff.

We think that all of the above differs substantially from a shopping spree. That's just taking things too far, debasing a young medium too much. The examples at hand may not be like Juan Cole taking a break from blogging about Iraq to post about all the cool stuff he scored from Target, or what have you, but the whole idea still strikes us as dirty. Bloggers are replacing mainstream media and we believe that the community as a whole has the same kind of obligation to inform the public at large about those topics that we're dedicated to covering. Objectivity may be something we're transcending, but that doesn't mean we have to swing so far the other direction that we become cheap tools of corporate interest.

We recognize that this is a complex situation unfolding in a changing media landscape, but we didn't find Forrester's reasoning compelling enough to change our minds.

Now enterprise mashup platforms, such as Presto Wires from JackBe, are starting to gain traction. In January 2007, an Economist Intelligence Unit survey (PDF - please note that this is a separate report than the Forrester report mentioned elsewhere in this post) revealed that mashups were the most popular traditional web 2.0 technology in the enterprise, with 64% of companies saying they already use or planned to use mashups within the next 2 years.

Mashups come in three distinct flavors in the enterprise, says Forrester:

• Presentation layer mashup. This is the most simple variety. Presentation layer mashups present content from disparate sources together in a unified view. A start page like Netvibes would be an example.
• Data mashup. More complex than presentation layer mashups, data mashups "combine, manipulate, and tie together disparate data sources to present a unified view." An example would be Twittervision.
• Process mashup. Says Forrester: "The most complex of the three, process mashups allow users to mashup not just data sources but also business processes themselves, customizing process design and invoking business logic across multiple applications."

Forrester believes that the enterprise mashup market will hit a tipping points in 2009-2010 and will fold into the IT landscape by 2013. "As a result," writes Forrester, "we expect traditional collaboration and productivity vendors like IBM and Microsoft to ultimately come to dominate the mashup platform market, rolling mashup platforms into major products like SharePoint and the Lotus application suite."

Young gives three reasons he things deployment of web 2.0 will sneak onto enterprise agendas in 2008:

1. IT guys are already using web 2.0 - According to Young, many IT departments and shops have been using web 2.0 tools for internal tasks like project management and support ticketing. The utility of these deployments will encourage them to push web 2.0 tools out more broadly in the enterprise.
2. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - When big business is unable to stem the use of Software as a Service tools and things like social networks by employees, rather than allow untested software and services on their networks, they will "mitigate risk by deploying enterprise-class tools in their stead."
3. They make you look cool - "For IT departments aspiring to be more relevant to the business," writes Young, "enterprise web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation."

RSS Will Lead the Way

Forrester predicts that RSS will be the most popularly deployed web 2.0 tool in the enterprise over the coming year. "Forrester expects 2008 to be a banner year for RSS and specifically enterprise RSS," says Young, concluding that many of the companies that discovered utility in blogs and wikis last year will realize that RSS is necessary to push that content to users. "While 9% of enterprise firms expect to consider the use of RSS in 2008, we believe that number will be close to 20% by year-end."

But while RSS might be the most important driver of enterprise web 2.0 adoption in 2008, Forrester expects social networking to still be the buzz word du jour. "Expect the adoption of social networking solutions for business to accelerate dramatically in 2008 with many firms looking for internal social networking solutions," predicts the research firm.

While Forrester expects the big boys -- IBM, Jive, etc. -- to rule the roost, they note that "nearly any vendor that uses the term 'social networking' will get at least some consideration." Though, Forrester also expects Microsoft SharePoint to "steamroll" the market, and will reap the most rewards from a shift toward web 2.0 thinking in the enterprise market.

Though the report puts a lot of stock in RSS and social networking, according to their enterprise survey, the technologies that more enterprises are actually planning to invest in over the next 12 months are discussion boards and wikis. Forrester, though, expects that it is these technologies that will drive the further adoption of RSS.

What do you think? Is the enterprise ready for web 2.0? Has web 2.0 already arrived in the enterprise? Lets us know in the comments below.