modular innovation review user experience

Wonderful Wikis… they are Free and they are Hosted!

Jeremy Hornby
14 Comments on Wonderful Wikis… they are Free and they are Hosted!

wiki (Part 1 of 7) More and more companies, from start-ups to Fortune 500s, are making greater and greater use of wikis.  As the trend and adoption of wikis has spread, so too have the options.  There are hundreds of features, plan choices, and price points to consider from all types of wiki providers.

With so many choices available, it would not be possible for me to delve into the good, bad, and desirable improvements of every wiki in existence.  I have decided to limit the scope of this discussion of the User eXperience (especially including Usefulness) of wikis to the…

Top 3
Hosted wiki solutions

.. as determined by their corresponding Alexa rankings.

Wiki
 Alexa Ranking
( May 2008 )
Wikia 324
wetpaint 2,281
PBwiki 3,029
 
wikia
wetpaint
pbwiki

 

In addition, later in the discussion, I will also introduce you to 2 other noteworthy wikis…

 

google sites versionate

 

Both of these wiki providers warrant keeping an eye on as they develop and evolve.

Wikis exist to help the average person contribute to a collection of web pages.  Within a corporate environment, whether small or big, new or established, if chosen well, a wiki can contribute to the long term knowledge management and improved collaboration amongst all its users.  Success of a wiki starts with support from the organization and continues with use by all within it.

Therefore, starting off on the right foot, with the best wiki available is all that much more crucial.  Over the next few weeks, I will discuss the enjoyable, disappointing, and desirable aspects of these 5 wikis, Wikia, wetpaint, PBwiki, Google Sites, and Versionate, and share with you which I find to be today’s ultimate wiki, as well as what to look out for tomorrow.

Think & Share…

What is your company’s current wiki experience?  How would you change it?

Subscribe now (click here) to make sure you don’t miss any part of this series exploring best online wiki User eXperiences as well as other upcoming, insightful posts from The Product Guy.

More Information

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

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Published by Jeremy Horn

Jeremy Horn is an award-winning, product management veteran with 2 decades of experience leading and managing product teams. Jeremy has held various executive and advisory roles, from founder of several start-ups to driving diverse organizations in online services, consumer products, and wearables. As founder of The Product Group, he has created the largest product management meetup in the world and hosts the annual awarding of The Best Product Person. Accelerating the next evolution of product management, Jeremy acted as creator and instructor of the 10-week product management course at General Assembly and The New School, and mentoring at Women 2.0 and Lean Startup Machine (where is he also a judge). To see where Jeremy is now check him out at (1) http://linkedin.com/in/TheProductGuy and (2) http://TheProductGuy.com

14 comments

  1. I’ve been using PBwiki for a couple of months now. I find it to be a great way to keep track of information in a central location that I won’t lose. I’ve been using it particularly to keep track of projects and also for creating lists of resources for specific topics related to web development and design.

    PBwiki is not the most powerful wiki in the world, but my primary need was an easy way to create new pages and keep the content private. It’s worked well for this need.

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  2. I’ve used wetpaint before and thought that was ok, will be interesting to see what are your our own experiences are. I didn’t really use it too often, so I look forward to reading a more detailed overview of each site.

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  3. Jeremy,
    Do you really think that most hosted wiki’s have the appropriate toolsets for true corporate use?
    Check out http://www.awarenessnetworks.com as an example of what I’d expect to see in a true corporate wiki.
    I dont have a vested interest one way or the other as I’m not a corporate user/consultant of wikis just trying to point out for corporate use while wet paint makes some effort in thsi space there is a lot more i’d expect to see in a major corporate implementation.

    Cheers,
    Dean Collins
    http://www.Cognation.net

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  4. I notice your using Drupal, you should add Drupals own wiki profile to the noteworthy section. Quite handy if your already proficient in Drupal.

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  5. Looking forward to this series of posts.

    I’m focusing BricaBox on this wiki market now — because I think we can compete and because it’s still a quickly growing market — so I imagine there’s a lot to learn from your observations.

    See you soon.

    Nate

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  6. Hi Jeremy,

    I’m sorry to see Wikispaces didn’t make the cut! With over a million members and 433K wikis (http://tinyurl.com/59g5ne), we’re pretty high on the list in terms of adoption. Unfortunately, Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and the like radically under-report our traffic, currently millions of uniques/month.

    Regardless, we’re looking forward to the series — it’s a great space to be in and one that we think will see strong growth for the foreseeable future.

    Best,
    James

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  7. Thanks for noting PBwiki; the team here is looking forward to finding out what you liked and didn’t!

    -David Weekly, PBwiki’s Founder & CEO

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