eastwikkers

Wikia’s Openserving: A Business Without a Model

You’ve got to love the honesty of Wikia’s CEO Gil Penchina on plans to launch openserving.com to provide free hosting of wiki-based collaborative websites:

“If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? Well, I don't know yet.”

Wika just received additional funding from Amazon.com Inc., and I wonder how the investors are responding to the comment. But if it’s experiments we want, then this is a good one. It’s an opportunity for individuals or small groups who otherwise couldn’t to launch a content venture that might make some money and get some notoriety. It will be interesting to watch the adoption here. How much value? How much noise?  And will a sustainable business model follow?

Die Uberwikimeister Von SAP

A few days ago, we picked the SAP Apollo Wiki for the 33 Wikis series.   Just learned today that the "Apollo Überwikimeister" is SAP's Mark Crofton, based in New York. We will be following his blog, "The Village View."  Interesting perspectives, from one of SAP's supernodes.

Hey Miki, You're So Fine ...

Eastwick client Socialtext announced this today:  a wiki optimized for mobile devices.  What's this all about?  A little thing called "adoption." 

“A natural extension of Socialtext’s wiki workspaces is delivering a mobile user interface to spur adoption among business users,” said Peter O’Kelly, Research Director, Burton Group. “Wikis are revitalizing the collaboration software market. Their accessibility and intuitive user experience make them highly effective for many collaboration scenarios that are not well addressed by more sophisticated enterprise products.”

One of the great things about wikis is that they adapt to how people work.   Miki is another step forward in that direction.

PS:  Note how Steve Rubel might tie this to his "how I work kit."

The Gatekeeper and The Collaborator

Not so long ago if one wanted to find information on say, lipids, the Encyclopedia Britannica was a first stop to learn more about triglycerides and cholesterol. These days, however, we're more likely to key in "define: lipids" in Google or check out the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Ever wonder which source would be more accurate?

When the scientific journal Nature compared Wikipedia to Britannica in a Dec. 15 report, it found that: "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of it science entries." When it compared the two sources' entry on lipids, Nature railed Britannica for its "outdated nomenclature."

This week, as the Wall Street Journal reported, Britannica is firing back and planning to run ads saying the Nature findings lack validity. The venerable Britannica versus an online upstart? It shouldn't be a surprise. Afterall, the Internet has transformed the way we perform research and consume information. It also calls into question issues of trust and accountability. Wikipedia suggests people are more likely to trust information built on a model of collaboration, while Britannica banks on what media theorists term the "gatekeeping" approach. At least for now, it would be worthwhile to read both sources.  Eastwikkers are keeping a close eye on Wikipedia. As the "33 Wikis" series progresses, stay tuned for more insight.

Forrester: Institutional Power Declines

From Steve Rubel.  Consistent with what we've been tracking in the world of DIY communities.  Grassroot groups are now competitive with the "establishment," in business and in politics.

Danah Boyd: It Ain't Easy

So, David Callisch (Ruckus) and I will soon be behind the mics at Heather Gold's SxSW panel on "Open Source Management."   In prepping for this, I remembered that there are basically three things that have happened to marketing:  (1) it is getting more transparent, (2) it is becoming more collaborative, and (3) most interesting of all -- from my perspective -- it is becoming more ad hoc.  Thus all the interest in DIY community tools which theoretically might help companies to more easily and more cost-effectively enlist the masses, tap the wisdom of crowds, and attempt big things in marketing that years ago would have required a massive budget. 

The idea is really appealling to small companies, of course, who will never have such a budget.  But how easy is it to do this? What's actually involved in getting a community up and running, and sustainable over time? 

Check out Danah Boyd's recent article on the challenges of building heterogeneous communities.  If you are thinking that your company can become the next craigslist, Flickr or MySpace, you'll need to first understand the skills, stamina and creativity that are required of a good community manager. 

These three sites have many attributes in common. They all grew organically. They each have public personalities that early adopters feel connected to. The early adopters really felt as though they were participating in and creating an intimate community, even as the community grew to millions. Users are passionate. Designers are passionate. They feel a responsibility to it and are deeply invested in making users happy. Character was not boiled out of the site; the text on the system is natural and goofy, reflecting the personality quirks of the developers rather than the formal speech of a corporation. Each site has a unique culture that was born early on and evolved through years of use and growth. The culture evolves with the designers and users working in tandem.

Customer service is not a segregated group who simply answers questions of a finalized product. They are completely integrated into the design system and the senior people are the most deeply embedded in user culture. There is a strong commitment to the needs and desires of the users.

An SXSW Wiki Project

We're southbound this morning, heading to SXSW Interactive, where we'll be conducting a little experiment on a wiki on behalf of Eastwick client Ruckus Wireless.  Objective:  we're tapping the wisdom of crowds at Heather Gold's "open source management" seminar, Tuesday March 14.  We're hoping to round up some of the best minds in interactive media to help us develop this baby wiki into something that will help to organize the rather fragmented market for IPTV in the U.S.  Ambitious?  Yes.   Impractical?  Yes.  But we're giving it a shot anyway, and looking forward to your support (you don't need to be at SXSW to contribute to the baby wiki -- it's already open to the public).

Another reason that SXSW Interactive makes a good spot for this experiment:  all the indie filmmakers next door, many of which we are certain are wondering when IPTV really coming.  Our take:  there's no place like home for indie film distribution.

Supernodes drive wiki adoption

Eastwick client Ross Mayfield (CEO, Socialtext) links to a great primer on wiki adoption.  The author is Suw Charman, who has been working with Socialtext onsite at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, home of one of the largest (if not the largest) corporate wiki.  We like Suw's observation that a top-down strategy alone will not drive wiki adoption (that's been our experience at Eastwick).  Behold the "supernode," one of the key drivers of wiki adoption:

2. Identify and understand key users
Once you have identified key user groups, you need to know which users within that group are both influential and likely to be enthusiastic. Then consider how social software fits in to the context of their job, their daily working processes and the wider context of their group's goals.

• What specific problems does social software solve?
• What are the benefits for this person?
• How can the software be simply integrated into their existing working processes?
• How does social software lower their work load, or the cognitive load associated with doing specific tasks?

Ideally, key users will be 'supernodes' - highly connected, in contact with a lot of people on a daily basis, and heavily involved with the function of their department and the transfer of information within the group and between groups. This may not be the group executive, but could well be his PA or a direct report. Frequently, people's supernode status is not reflected by official hierarchy.

Tour begins!

We began our Winter/Spring tour tonight at the New Communications Forum, the three-day new-media luvfest brought to you by the most excellent Jennifer McClure and Elizabeth Albrycht.  We led a Wiki 101 workshop this afternoon, and the assignment was to build out the NCF event wiki.   It was a fun, engaging project, and you can see a live snapshot of it here (check out the "five questions"). 

Tomorrow, we're moderating a panel on the future of online publishing; the group includes Tom Foremski and folks from Corrante, IDG and Rojo.   Then next week, we're on the road, with a first stop at PRSA Seattle, where we'll mix it up with people from SAP Labs, Microsoft, Port of Seattle, and others.  And then, we're off to SXSW, where we will participate on Heather Gold's panel, "Open Source Marketing."  Fun tour -- we're talking about some of the more interesting community experiments we're involved in at Eastwick.

Vyatta to the Public

Last night, Om Malik pulled back the covers on Eastwick-client Vyatta, a start-up that has launched a community to create an open-source alternative to traditional routers. We like this project for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the community is using a wiki. Wikis have often been used in projects involving collaboration between developers, but the Vyatta community may bring new visibility and understanding for just how this works. The community is "vyatta" (Sanskrit for "open") to the public. Check it out.