Jul
4
Much to our suprise, we learned that Tantek Çelik is no longer with Technorati. We are excited to see what Tantek has up his sleeve, I suspect it is going to be cool! On a side note, the Wikipedia entry to Tantek was updated by Gary King minutes after this news became public. Isn’t Wikipedia great?
Jul
1
Wikipedia is the best known collector of social information. The site is more than six years old and as is known to most users as an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It is really more than an encyclopedia as an article in the New York Times titled, “All the News That’s Fit to Print Out” explains,
For centuries, an encyclopedia was synonymous with a fixed, archival idea about the retrievability of information from the past. But Wikipedia’s notion of the past has enlarged to include things that haven’t even stopped happening yet. Increasingly, it has become a go-to source not just for reference material but for real-time breaking news — to the point where, following the mass murder at Virginia Tech, one newspaper in Virginia praised Wikipedia as a crucial source of detailed information.
Wikipedia is a representation of information that evolves as our understanding of that information evolves. Interestingly, as Jonathan Dee points out, more than 6.8 million work together to create and edit more than 1.8 million articles. This ’social information’ is increasingly becoming more and more timely. For the past six years users have been working on competing with existing encyclopedias like Britanica, but now Wikipedia has transcended that traditional model. The internet and the social interaction it allows have created something all together different, and fundamentally better.
Feb
16
Turns out Wikipedia is one of the top ten most visited sites on the web according to Danny Sullivan:
Feb
10
Duncan Riley reported yesterday that the Wikimedia Foundation is insolvent. The Chairwoman of the foundation that runs Wikipedia indicated that the organization would run out of money in three to four months. Of course her goal is to get you to donate money to her foundation, but I think it might be time to rethink how the Wikipedia is funded and controlled.
The current stewards are obviously failing. The fact that Ms. Devouard has run this asset to the brink of insolvency is almost unbelievable. The property is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and yet her team cannot think of a better way to fund the website than begging Lift07 conference attendees for more money.
I propose that the foundation publish its financial situation publicly and then build an all-star board to help turn this ship around. I am certain that together we can come up with a neutral, non-commercial model that will ensure the survival of Wikipedia forever. Duncan suggests, “I smell a begging bluff on this one…” I suspect so, but I think it might be time to stabilize my favorite property on the web.
Jan
16
We have been using wikis in our business as well as promoting the collaboration tool to our clients. The Dallas Mavericks are experimenting with a public wiki for use by fans. The Dallas Observer talked to Mark Cuban about the wiki,
But, then, that is the point. Team owner Mark Cuban tells Unfair Park that MavsWiki is intended “a way for fans to have more fun and connect closer to the Mavs” by posting their fond memories of games way past and recently present. Mavs staffers (meaning, interns) will augment the site with old game stories from the Associated Press and other media outlets. Cuban also says, “I think it’s a first of any kind”; certainly, no other pro sports team has a similar site…at the moment.
Check it out here: Mavswiki.com. The cost of deployment is very low compared with traditional fan sites, and it gives your brand a great opportunity to let your fans generate content. It will be interesting to see if dedicated wikis (versus public wikis like Wikipedia) take off. What do you think?
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