Choose Your Web Tools Carefully

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File this under "you get what you pay for". You know all those nifty Web 2.0 tools you've implemented into your company as business tools? Some, you may be using for free and then others you may be using for a modest subscription fee.

Many (Most?) of those tools are offered by fledgling companies; depending on their next round of funding to survive. Others may be a little safer; having been acquired by a larger company (ex. EBay owns Skype. But there's some speculation EBay is looking to dump Skype.). Bottom line: in this economy, you can expect a lot of these little companies to do a fast fade with VC money drying up faster than quilted Bounty quicker picker-upper. If this happens to the company behind your "little app that can", where does that leave your business?

Best advice:

Chances are your employees are using Web 2.0 tools from fledgling companies that you don't even know about right now. Now is the time to find out who is using what. How critical has that tool become for them to get their work done. What tools are being used company-wide that you do know about and how secure is the provider? Now is the time to do a little home work on those companies (The good news is that Google's not going anywhere anytime soon. So, research should be a breeze.).

After taking an inventory, weigh the risks and migrate to the tools of a more stable company as common sense would dictate. Do it now. It will be a lot less painful than getting caught flat-footed.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio