Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).

A CIO magazine's study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008 finds that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A survey of 250 “top IT executives” from a collection of small, medium and large organizations doesn’t even touch on the issue of Web 2.0.

In fact, the top 10 technology priorities are:,

• Creating or improving strategic applications (cited by 37 percent)
• Expanding IT infrastructure to keep up with growth (cited by 32 percent)
• Improving IT security (cited by 31 percent)
• Instituting a more flexible IT infrastructure (cited by 27 percent)
• Improving the quality of information (cited by 26 percent)
• Standardizing and consolidating IT infrastructure (cited by 24 percent)
• Discovering and deploying innovative, new technologies (cited by 23 percent)
• Improving ROI of IT investments (cited by 21 percent)
• Reducing the complexity of information systems (cited by 21 percent)
• Replacing legacy systems (cited by 21 percent)

A case could be made that seventh ranked priority (“innovative, new technologies”) could in fact include Web 2.0, but these tools are hardly new—they’ve been around for four-plus years.

A look inside the organization, and what each company has done confirms our suspicions. As I reported in my article, Intranet 2.0 on the rise, but barely, the deployment and use of Web 2.0 on the corporate intranet has barely advanced in the past two years.

Jane McConnell’s Global Intranet Trends Report reveals that very few organizations have implemented or optimized intranet 2.0 tools for general use in most organizations:

• Only 6 percent have blogs in general use (another 23 percent have them implemented it in some form) while 45 percent are still in test mode.
• Only 7 percent have implemented commenting tools (e.g. post a comment to a story on the intranet) in general use (another 35 percent have implemented it in some form).
Still worse, security and privacy are major concerns and a huge barrier to widespread adoption of Web 2.0. An Economist Intelligence Unit for KMPG found that 52 percent of executives (of 472) say securing and protecting sensitive data was the top barrier to adopting the Web 2.0.

It’s not that there isn’t value in Web 2.0—I believe there’s tremendous value, and I live in breathe it with my blogging—it’s that most companies to don’t agree, don’t see value in it (or are scared by the security experts), aren’t realizing the value, and have better things to do.

If Web 2.0 tools are to become common place on the corporate Web site and intranet (and open to general use by most if not all users and employees), Web site managers will have to continue to address bigger priorities first, including getting the attention of senior management with reliable intelligence and thorough business cases that support Web 2.0.