On the eve of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Forrester Research released a report stating that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will continue to rise over the next five years, growing 43 percent each year to reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013.

The five-year forecast from Forrester, released April 21, features a breakdown of future business spending on technologies such as social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting and widgets, as well as an analysis of enterprise Web 2.0 spending across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The report forecasts that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technology will "get hot" in Europe and the Asia Pacific region in 2009.

The report notes that large businesses, including General Motors, McDonald’s, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo, all use Web 2.0 tools extensively and that 56 percent of North American and European enterprises say Web 2.0 will be a priority this year.

Read the full article at eWEEK.