Personal and collective knowledge management in the web 2.0: Two faces of knowledge management?

Abstract

Web 2.0 has reinvented the concept of Knowledge Management towards a vision aiming at faciliating interaction, cooperation and knowledge exchange of individuals, groups and communities. This article tries to answer two questions: Can Web 2.0 tools be applied for managing knowledge at the individual and collective level? and How effective are Web 2.0 tools for supporting Personal Knowledge Management? After introducing the comcept of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), Collective Management (CKM) and Web 2.0 phenomenon, this paper surveys different Web 2.0 tools and compare their role for supporting CKM and PKM. The conclusion of this study appears to confirm that the individual and collective dimension are not conflicting, but on the contrary represent two different facets of complex knowledge management process. Furthermore this study indicates a number of pitfalls such as: the level of complexity and fragmentation of these tools makes the optimal usage difficult, or/and the privacy risks that originates from the difficulty to separate the 'personal sphere' from the 'collective sphere'.