As readers of this blog know, I am a proponent of Web 2.0, and its corporate counterpart Enterprise 2.0. You are also aware that I have several times mused about how pure uncensored or unmanaged collaboration is over-hyped, some management makes sense, some control over the who contributes and what is contributed can be necessary. There was an interesting development in Web 2.0 that supports this position.
Sermo, a Web 2.0 collaborative site that allows physicians from around the world to exchange ideas and observations, decided recently to expand its community, but simultaneously strengthened its content and user authentication. Sermo is approximately a year old and already has over 30,000 physicians participating. The forum was founded as a controlled platform, for doctors only, with assurance that content is protected from the general public. Sermo is rooted in the philosophy that Web 2.0 collaboration does not have to mean "wide-open", and that contributors can be registered and "approved".
Today, Sermo announced that it will partner with Pfizer, a move that seems to go against the charter of Sermo, i.e. letting industry commercial opinion into the mix. Apparently after a year of collaboration, the community of doctors believe there would be value in having input from "the industry", i.e. pharmaceutical R&D professionals. But, according to the article, "it's expected any postings by Pfizer's medical staff must be
clearly identified as coming from a Pfizer source logging onto the
system securely from an office computer, said Daniel Palestrant,
Sermo's CEO. In our recent Market IQ on Content Security, we talked about content and user authentication. This move by Sermo is an excellent example of the value of such functionality. Moreover, Sermo is an example, in my opinion, of the future of many Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 sites, that will rely on content security techniques to provide greater value and control over otherwise chaotic input.
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