Is Web 2.0 a potential peril to productivity? Is there a risk of employees spending their time on the company dime engaged in superfluous online activities, like trashing ex-girlfriends/boyfriends or watching music videos on YouTube?

Both Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe have publicly stated that they are seeking examples of serious productivity issues resulting from Web 2.0 deployments. So far, Dion reports, “no one has come forward with a significant story around productivity loss, or misuse of these tools in the enterprise. “We have been unable to hear even one. So far, the evidence is looking favorable.”

Dion had recently joined Beth Gold-Bernstein, my colleague from ebizQ, who hosted a fascinating online panel discussion on the growing convergence between SOA and Web 2.0. Beth and Dion were joined by ZapThink’s Ron Schmelzer, and Doug Wilson, CTO of portals and collaboration products at IBM.

For those managers who fear the ramifications of productivity loss as a result of unleashing Web 2.0 into their enterprises, think back to the first Macs and Windows-based PCs 20 years ago, said Doug Wilson. “When we introduced GUIs 20 years ago, there was the same question. Weren’t we going to waste a lot of time, people moving the mouse around?”

Of course, PCs and Macs had a very different kind of an impact on productivity.

An even more delicious example is employee orientation at a candy factory, Doug added:

“Candy makers indoctrinate people by telling them to eat as much candy as they want off the line for the first day, or anytime else for that matter. After 20 minutes, people will have had their fill.”

Likewise, when a new technology or technique is introduced, it’s only natural for people to try and learn and teach themselves. That’s how human beings learn — they experiment and play.”

Dion also provided this example of how Web 2.0 sweeps through the enterprise:

“AOL rolled out…a very heavyweight content management platform. But users gravitated to a new media wiki platform, the same platform that powers Wikipedia. Within a couple of months, because the tool was so much easier to use, and had been proven on a very large scale, with all the adoption kinks worked out of it in that very large laboratory called the Web… it was successful to the point where 95% of their content management now occurs in those platforms.”

This is a fairly common story, Dion added — analogous to the way the PC came into the back door of organizations 20 years ago.