Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 is set for a five-year boom, growing at 43% each year before reaching US$4.6 billion in 2013, according to a Forrester Research report.

The figure takes into account business spending on social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mash-ups, podcasting, widgets and other enterprise Web 2.0 tools.

The report found that over half of the enterprises surveyed in North America and Europe considered Web 2.0 to be a priority for adoption in 2008, while many large enterprises, including General Motors and McDonalds, have already made heavy use of Web 2.0 tools to reach customers and prospects and encourage employee collaboration.

Forrester analyst Oliver Young predicts that, while the effect of Web 2.0 will be enormous, “Social computing and Web 2.0 marketing are still in their infancy and in general the market is still in an experimental phase.”

However, despite the rising popularity of social computing, Young is not expecting an “easy road” for firms selling Web 2.0 software.

“The market for enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditisation, eroding prices, and incorporation into enterprise collaboration software over the next five years, and will eventually disappear into the fabric of the enterprise,” he notes.

Further reading:

Social networking within the enterprise Business use of social networking is fuelling a revolution in collaboration and knowledge sharing.

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