Web 2.0 Buying Will Hit $4.6B by 2013: Analyst

Spending on Web 2.0 technologies is ready to explode, according to a new report from Forrester Research. The market will reach $4.6 billion by 2013, the report predicts, as the technology starts to saturate the business world. To get there, it’ll have to jump an average of 43% a year, since this year’s sales amount to a mere $764 million.

The report defines “Web 2.0” as blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups and podcasting. Soon, researcher Oliver Young argues, those technologies will be as ubiquitous as Microsoft Office. And while $4.6 billion may look like an eye-popping figure, it would account for just 1% of the enterprise software market. “It’s a drop in the bucket,” says Young. “It’s not very much in actuality.” (More Web 2.0 stories.)