There are fewer and fewer reasons for enterprise customers to avoid jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

An Australian business consultant just issued a highly readable white paper urging businesses to take part. Trevor Cook wrote, "You have nothing to lose but boredom."

A couple of proof-points worth checking out:

Ringside Networks is going to unveil an open-source social application server to help customers seamlessly integrate Facebook applications with any Web site.

Blist, a cloud-based database vendor, has also found a way to wrap social networks into their offering.

The Seattle startup, which attracted officials from Google and Microsoft at Demo 2008, lets users create databases called Blists that employ spreadsheet front-ends. Users create the Blists to store information for private use and for groups to collaborate on.

There's a lot of discussion about how much value social networks owe to participants; regardless of where you stand on that issue, there's no denying that there's value in them thar hills.