Maybe it’s just the way you interpret web 2.o, but once you get past closed and open, you are making a lot of generalizations that are not entirely factual. There is some truth but not the whole truth, which is unfortunate because it tends to reinforce mis-information and put businesses that are closed at a disadvantage.

I’m not sure when this post was made but there are many things in your left column happening in social media and the fact that most traditional organizations are used to control and closed systems may become a major disadvantage to them. Seems like this is one case where the big players are more out of touch than in touch with what is possible.

My personal opinion is that this distinction of internal vs external is becoming more of a limitation. At best, its a risky lens as organizations chart out what the next generation of doing business is going to look like.

Take for example sales intelligence. The notion of critical insight is just as likely to show up on a enterprise powered customer facing product blog, rich with customer comments, as it would from an ERP system or an internal Wiki. Increasingly the distance between a sales rep and the prospect is shrinking and in many cases, sales wants marketing to get out of the way. There are similar examples for product development, customer service, etc.

Sure, specific examples are clearly delineated (e.g. DellOutlet on Twitter) where its purely outward facing. But when you consider enterprise efficiency (what you have on the left), one can risk getting dangerously myopic if you consider your universe to be behind the firewall, efficiency focused, etc.

The good news is the Enterprise 2.0 services are recognizing this. For instance, SocialCast is folding in relevant discussions on Facebook and Twitter into what was previously a closed internal employee communication loop.