The past week I spent at the Web 2.0 Expo. It was interesting to hear the various perspectives on SEO, SMO, new tools to use for the social web, and the new startups being launched. But by far the most compelling talk I heard was held by O’Reilly at the end of the show.

Through this talk the two founders of O’Reilly’s consulting division spoke about their experiences consulting for enterprise-size, traditional corporations and how these corporations are loosing market share rapidly as a result of the social web. They presented the “seven deadly sins” of social media including not wanting to be engaged in two-way dialogue with their costumers, not wanting to include their “lead costumers” in the beta-testing and product feedback, among others.

By far the most profound point was (and I’m paraphasing): We could give you all a web 2.0 strategy to take back to your company, but the fact is that if a there is not a critical mass of employees within your company that are on-board with this new philosophy – its not going to work.

This is pretty amazing – that essentially the current corporate culture itself, within the company, is the cause of its own downturn. And that this is the only way to remedy the situation.

A perfect example of this is the Comcast video shot by a customer. A Comcast tech arrived to service an account at someone’s residence and fell asleep on the couch after waiting an hour on hold with homebase. Here’s the video:

To combat the bad press – Comcast spent $x Millions in a new “speedy, reliable service” advertising campaign.

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Tags: comcast, social web, Web 2.0

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.