Gonzobankers Tripp Johnson posted a great article over the weekend, Web 2.0: It’s Not Just for Customers Anymore. In the article, he asked some important questions:

• How many of you have participated in a blog?
• How many of you have collaborated via a wiki?
• How many of you have subscribed to an RSS feed?

My guess is, not that many. Like William Azaroff, who also commented on the article, I work in the corporate office, so Im also where the decisions are made. In addition, I also get the mail for the IT departments (a way to get away from my desk), so I see what magazines people are reading. Ive also seen our CEO forward articles to our VP of IT. However, I think Im the only person here that actively reads blogs. I believe most people know what they are, but theyre too busy trying to keep things running to casually read or participate on them.

Fortunately, I know of a few subscribers to Gonzobanker and Banc Investment Daily because I forwarded articles to them. Unfortunately, if Gonzobanker doesnt mention it, I doubt they would know about disruptive Web 2.0 technologies. Sure, eWeek, Computerworld and Infoworld talk about them, but you dont see that much in banking magazines. As a test, I searched for the following terms:

• Wesabe
• Blog
• Wiki
• Rss
• Prosper
• Obopay
• Zopa
• Ruby/Rails

I checked on these websites:

• ABA Banking Online
• American Banker
• BAI
• Bank Systems & Technology
• Bank Technology News
• CUES
• US Banker

Only CUES mentioned Wesabe in an article. Everyone mentioned most of the other terms. Obopay was usually mentioned because of their partnership with Citi. No site mentioned Ruby or Rails, in the context of web programming. Younger employees, especially those 30 and under, tend to be very familiar with these technologies. Most of them probably have a page on MySpace and/or Facebook and regularly use Digg, Reddit or Del.icio.us. I imagine most executives have heard of MySpace and Facebook, but may not be familiar with the others. The fact that Wesabe now offers an API for importing online banking information is reason enough to pay attention to them.

Tripp also brought up some good points as to why bankers wont adopt Web 2.0. I think its a little bit simpler than what he suggested. Im more inclined to go with what Wil Schroter thought about people over 30.

Originaly from Source