There was a time when the published opinion was solely the province of the professional. (To be clear, the distinction I make here is not qualitative, but rather one of access. There were and indeed are many, many poor writers who still manage to earn a living doing it.) No longer. The era of Web 2.0 – if you’ve just fallen asleep, I quite understand – has not just lowered the barrier to entry; it’s taken a fire axe to it. But is this a Good Thing?

For the sake of argument, let me first cast aside the multitude of great blogs out there, the breathtaking creativity of some of the UGC created for video games, the guilty fascination of following a minor celebrity’s Twitter feed, the sheer number of relationships only made possible through Facebook, Bebo and co, and the sporadic genius of homebrew youtube videos. Ah, the joy of the monologue.

Let’s instead take a more ‘glass half empty’ perspective. Specifically, the growing belief that just because you have something to say, other people must be interested in hearing it. Like some ghastly mass therapy session, there’s considered to be some intrinsic value in sharing your views with the world. I emote therefore I am.

Worse still is the prevailing belief that some kind of universal human truths can be garnered from this litany of self-expression. Because everyone knows a Facebook profile is a genuine reflection of your personality and not – not even a little bit – a platform to show the world the best possible version of you.

Nimbly nipping back to some semblance of relevance, I wonder if companies have had more success than me with their tentative first steps into this brave new world? It strikes me that no one seems yet to have resolved the fundamental tension between a medium that is personal and spontaneous, and the desire for organisations to control their brand (though this control has always been an illusion – you don’t own your brand, your customers do, etc).

There are successful examples, of course. Visa made youtube’s Dancing Dan the star of a global campaign, which is either an unorthodox way of reverse engineering brand advertising or simply the New Sponsorship. Sony’s infamous PSP ‘flog’ (fake blog) fiasco is only one example of the sinister PR practice of paying ‘influencers’ to post marketing fluff pieces on social networks. Neither of these routes seem particularly sustainable or robust to me.

In fact, the failure (thus far) of the world of business to crack the world of the empowered user can be summed up by the fact that by far the most common and reliably effective use of these new channels is good old fashioned advertising. And let’s be honest – if big business ever did manage to genuinely adopt social networks as effective marketing tools, the residents would be off before you could say ‘Stick it to the man’.

Here’s my two cents: the immediate future of Web 2.0 from a business perspective lies in replicating the model of social networks to provide new tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing within the company. Like the Tweet that tells me you’ve finally passed that tenacious kidney stone, perhaps it’s just one of those things that’s best kept between friends.

N.B. To paraphrase Sideshow Bob, I appreciate the irony of appearing on a Web 2.0 platform only to decry it, so don’t bother pointing it out.

In the spirit of dangerous debates that will run throughout this nascent blog, feel free to let us know if you’ve got an entirely different take or, better still, if you’ve had personal experience of putting Web 2.0 to work for your organisation.

Hello, and welcome to our new website and indeed to our blog. I’m told that blogs were very much the thing to be into 3 years ago, but thought it vulgar to be so down with the kids. So our blog has come at a more seemly, adult pace.

The question I’m asking myself at the moment is, how will the credit crunch affect what we do in the specialist fields of Internal Comms, HR and change? By rights, it should affect it profoundly. George Soros was on Newsnight recently talking about the end to what he called “fundamentalist capitalism.” Since he’s usually right, I began to ponder on his phrase. My pondering led me to the thought that what was fundamentalist about capitalism was the always-repeated, never-tested belief that growth was good. Every business, to survive and to be seen to be successful, has to grow according to the fundamentalist capitalist’s creed. It will do anything in order to secure growth. One of the things it is wont to do is create a vision and set of values based on the idea that its success is, somewhere down the line, equated with growth. Growth was given a moral dimension and was therefore a Good Thing. Because it was a Good Thing, it was therefore right to expect staff (please: let’s stop calling each other colleagues) to dedicate the better and larger parts of their lives to pursuing its ends.

Now, perhaps, a new belief system is required in order to give an answer to the question, “Why does firm A do what it does?” And with this question will come, perhaps, a number of answers that call into question the long-held values that firm A currently espouses. I’m intrigued to know what changes “regulated capitalism” will bring.

My favourite motivational phrase of the week is, “If your people are your biggest asset, you need to buy more stuff.” In my fantasy business world, this would be in a large frame on the wall behind every Chief Exec’s desk at every multi-national sky-scraping kill-or-be-killed über-company.