Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management

ARTICLE 3.

Levy, M. (2009). Web 2.0 implications on knowledge management. Journal of
Knowledge Management, 13(1), 120-134.


SUMMARY


Monica Levy comes at Web 2.0 from a Knowledge Management (KM) perspective. She outlines what Web 2.0 is and significantly the shift that Web 2.0 has meant to our relationship to finding and using information. Levy delves deeply into the various aspects of Web 2.0 and compares it to KM. Levy [2009, p. 130] has listed 8 key principles:

1. WEB as platform – the application is important not the software.
2. Services development
3. Active participation of users – an intrinsic shift in knowledge management and the web is where previously content managers and other experts took the major role in constructing the webpage, correlating information and cataloguing it. Users were just that, users not the active participators they have become. Users are divided by Levy into 3 subcategories passive users, minimal users and collaborative active users [p.122].
4. The service improves automatically the more it is used. Here Levy relates the rankings on search engines that relates to the number of previous searches affecting a ranking to the way academic papers gain more respect the more they are cited.
5. Collective intelligence (the long tail) – a reverse of the 80/20 business principle in which 20% of your clients return 80% of your profit. Now that 80% and the diversity that it brings are coveted. Knowledge management has always been about sharing and preserving the very knowledge of the people who use it. Levy makes the point that in KM, however there has always been an issue getting people to participate [p.130]
6. Content as the core
7. The perpetual beta
8. Rich user experience development via small modules

Each principle is then compared to matching principles in knowledge management and concludes that there are important correlations and some divergences especially in the “centralization, controlled attitude of knowledge management” [Levy, 2009, p.129] versus the nonhierarchical, democratized philosophy of Web 2.0.

REVIEW

Levy provides two very useful tables for comparison of Web 2.0 and knowledge management principle [p. 130] and comparison of Web 2.0 and KM tools and attributes [p.131]. The difference between the top down, proscribed and hierarchical nature of knowledge management and the decentralization and democratization inherent in Web 2.0 is fundamental. Knowledge management may have to embrace the principle rather than accept it as a difference if it wants to keep on top of its own profession.

Of particular importance is the idea of social computing and harnessing its power in knowledge management. Creating an organizational culture in which using knowledge tools becomes a natural part of the day to day activities of employees. People expect that there will be the kinds of tools Web 2.0 provides and to use them within an organization for example Wikis, blogs and podcasts. One of the problems for KM, the author acknowledges, is how to make KM tools easy and fun in the same way as blogs [p.131]. I think the article raises a significant question how many people actually use this stuff? There can be all the blogs and podcast and tools for review and Cloud tags but how useful are they if hardly anyone is using them? Users are divided by Levy into 3 subcategories passive users, minimal users and collaborative active users [p.122]. This is useful to think about, as sometimes passive users remain hidden, mere clicks on a counter but are perhaps our best customers? How do we get people to go for passive to active and collaborative? “… forcing people to encode their knowledge formally is not easy – in fact it can’t be done. But when people are socializing, even in a work context, they are much happier to share their thoughts and experiences.” [Tebbutt, 2007, cited p.132]

In regard to social search, tagging gives power to the user but is extremely inconsistent. Different people use different words to describe the same thing. Tagging is not uniform and makes it difficult to find specific information. In the article ‘Facebook as a social search engine and the implications for libraries in the twenty-first century’ Mark-Shane Scale [2008] goes a step further and proclaim this approach to information retrieval “grossly amateur.”[p.553] In KM and in libraries there will be a need to have some sort of uniformity to tagging before it can be beneficial.

Social computing, on the other hand, is a perfect match for gaining information in organizations. For example it is used in the form of the wiki Libnet at the University of Queensland. It is an intrinsic knowledge management tool. It contains procedures for every single task performed by library staff at all branches and areas, project reports and updates, meeting minutes, contact lists for internal and external needs, statistics, reports and all users can and edit it.

The article provides a valuable, in depth and accurate comparison of We 2.0 and Knowledge Management.