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Started my first wiki and I would have to say the project is going to be a lot more fun than anything I have done so far because the topics selected for the wiki will have a huge distribution channel. When you think about it through and through, wikis have progressed to be the next generation of mySpace, blogs, websites, forums and portals all combined into one. Why else would any one commit to three million dollars on a domain name? Yes the tech bubble may be back, but wikis are definitely hot.

How does a wiki measure up to any one of these applications?

• mySpace is a profile page where your friends link to you. You can create a glamorized profile in a wiki also and link to all your friends. Also you can have more than one page in a wiki, you can write a whole book on your life - not just one long page with lots of YouTube videos and pictures to crash all the browsers. You can edit, save, edit, save a million times to your heart’s content to create the perfect profile. Now all the ladies will love you long time, or people will start buying your Viagra products. Also at the high rate of fake profiles being created on mySpace for solely advertising purposes, MySpace site might lose its popularity eventually.
• Blogs are published journal entries. In a wiki, you can create as many entry pages as you need with a similar self contained page editor. In some ways, blog applications are getting too bloated and not as flexible compared to a wiki editor. Sometimes, a blog can hold back your creativity in that you don’t like to publish an incomplete half written blog. But a wiki does not have the limitation as everyone knows that a wiki is always a work in progress with multiple revisions around the corner. Readers don’t like to read blog posts more than once because it is not new worthy or reference like.
• Websites require editors such as Dreamweaver to produce what you see is what you get. A wiki can create the same websites you can do in HTML and better. Check out this interactive website, oh I mean wiki. Be serious, on first glance, can you even tell the difference between a wiki and a website? No really, because I couldn’t tell that it was a wiki until you see the same edit features on every page. (Yes, your myspace profile page can look this good in a wiki.) There is no difference, except a wiki allows you to edit web pages in real time by all contributors in your organization and not just limited to your webmaster(s). An incomplete website is unacceptable, but a wiki that is not complete is acceptable because visitors can help fill in the missing blanks.
• A forum is an extensive guestbook where people leave comments to your questions. A wiki has extensions where visitors can append comments to your entries thus keeping the discussions flowing. All of these pages and comments in a wiki are also searchable.
• A portal is a very large website. I would consider Wikipedia (a wiki also) to be a very successful portal, wouldn’t you? The form of a whole community partaking in the whole web building process is spreading like wild fire.

Now that I have the wiki installed and configured; the area of interest the wiki will be building on is going to non-technical because webmasters and technical individuals don’t click ads period. If you are a webmaster or content publisher, you know exactly what I am talking about. Before I forget, the wiki I have installed is PmWiki - very extensible, open source, no need for database and have a lot of features. You can compare which wiki is right for you at Wikipedia.

Wikis in the News: 

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/technology/04wiki.html