Companies: KWL    OMG   

Businesses are preparing to spend nearly $5 billion (£2.5 billion) by 2013 on social networking tools, with more than half of the companies in North America and Europe regarding Web 2.0 – the internet tech trend facilitating creativity and collaboration among users – as a priority for next year.

This is according to a survey from research body Forrester, which believes the technologies recently unveiled at a Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco represent a ‘fundamentally new way’ for businesses to communicate with employees and customers alike.

The report concluded that consumer giants ranging from General Motors to McDonalds will drive much of the growth, having already embraced tools such as podcasting, social networking, blogs and RSS feeds. Oliver Young, a Forrester analyst, says, ‘If I wanted to be anywhere in the Web 2.0 economy, I’d want to be on the enterprise side.’

Meanwhile, among London’s smaller quoted tech companies, upbeat trading updates lifted shares in two protagonists. OMG, the AIM-traded provider of image-understanding products for industries including entertainment and defence, advanced 3p to 50.5p after reassuring the market that trading for the half to March was on track. Enjoying strong demand across all markets, investors can expect ‘healthy’ growth in sales when OMG announces its figures in June.

Supply chain control software star Kewill Systems, valued at £72 million on the Official List, skipped 5p north to 89p after pleasing with the news that annual profits to March will beat forecasts.