Networked Knowledge Workers on the Web: An Examination of US Trends, 2008-2010

Abstract

With the growing popularity of online services that allow individuals to consume and contribute Web content with social groups of self-selected affiliates, the socio-technical geography of the Web has become increasingly complex. To map some of this space in a productive way for organizations and online researchers, we focus our attention on a particular segment of Web 2.0 services, publicly available online services (PAOSs) used for work purposes. After defining this segment and its relationship to other kinds of online services, we report the results of an annual survey that looks at who is using such PAOSs for work as well as the nature of that work. As our survey results indicate, how often PAOSs are used for work differs depending on the company size and office location of individuals. To frame our findings, we differentiate among the multiple PAOSs that respondents report using by classifying them as different genres of services, which we find provides a productive typology for understanding such services and their roles in organizations.