quite an advanced wiki farm an overview Micha Frckowiak - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

quite an advanced wiki farm – an overview

Michał Frąckowiak

MiniBar, London, 26 Jan 2007 michal@wikidot.com

Do you Wiki? Do you Wiki?

• WikiWiki = web pages you can edit!
• blogs are common, wikis are not (yet?)
• blog is a dynamical form of web existence
• the time of wikis is coming?... because wikis can do

things that blogs can not?

Wiki trends Wiki trends

• Wikipedia – amazing (and growing) popularity
• what can you use a wiki for?: homepages, online

colaboration, community sites, knowledge base, workspaces...

• ''let people create their own small Wikipedias!'' :-D

• nline

blogging platforms vs. wiki platforms trends.google.com

people are looking for information about Wikis Google search results for: ''wiki'': 250 000 000 ''blog'': 1 050 000 000

Wiki market today Wiki market today

• main competition: PBWiki.com,

WetPaint.com, Wikia.com, WikiSpaces.com, JotSpot.com (Google), Wiki.com

• recent inverstments:

– Wikia – $3.5m + undisclosed (~10m$)

from Amazonem

promised R&D facility in Poznan, Poland

– WetPaint – $3m + $9.5m – JotSpot – aquired by Google,

undisclosed amount

– Wiki.com – a domain for $2.8m, total

failure ;-)

Wikidot.com Wikidot.com

• a one-man-show:

– Jan 2006: development started – Apr 2006: full-time development – Aug 2006: first beta release – media: local newspapers follow up the

first press release

• now:

– fully-featured wiki farm, everyone is

welcomed to start his/her own wiki at http://your-wiki.wikidot.com

a Wiki killer app? a Wiki killer app?

• features != popularity, but:

– clean AJAX interface, private Wikis, SSL

access, members/moderators/admins, permissions, themes, editable CSS themes, forums, invitations, contact list, private messages, supported by ads (not yet), premium features (being tested), custom domain, private backups, edit locking, advanced Wiki syntax, modules (ratings, listings + a lot more), tags and tag clouds, categories, widgets from Widgetbox.com, Google Gadgets, YouTube, Flickr etc., RSS import/export, tools to manage communities!

• create a product that people need or

want to use

Some stats Some stats

• daily ~100 new registered users,

2000-3000 page edits, 7 000 - 9 000 visits, 40 000 page views

• Jan 2007:

> 100 000 unique visitors, > 1 000 000 page views

• 8 000 users, 3500 Wikis, 90 000

pages

• growing VERY fast ;-)
• powered by open-source software
• nly

What do the Users think? What do the Users think?

• Wikidot is a superb piece of work! […] I'm using wikidot as a research tool

to keep my ideas, articles and projects together. As a first release it's amazingly stable and fast. (zeroinfluencer)

• This would also have to be the best wiki farm we've ever seen.

Congratulations on the great work! (aeSentinel)

• It's a nice CLEAN layout and I'm thoroughly enjoying the process.

(nengland)

• When I found this, I thought’d give it a try, and just using it for a few

days, I’m already highly impressed. This site has all the features I’d want, without the complexity of some other solutions out there. (tylermac)

• I've been comparing places that could host my wiki and this was the best,

because it's usable even for a tech-[newbie] like me. (purplyana)

• It is one of the easiest wiki-building sites I've ever come upon. Easy to

use features, great interface, lot's of great features, you guys have really done something special here. […] This site is just too good not to become a success. shiraz

What do they create? What do they create?

• hobby sites, homepages,

traveling, student organizations Eupaco, OpenSuse (Polish Wiki), PolishLinux.org, games, RPG, MORPG, software, Linux

• private workspaces (non-public

wiki + secure SSL access)

• online colaboration
• documents, coding, open-source

projects, community pages

• .....

Plans for the future Plans for the future

• World domination ;-)
• expansion and improving user experience
• organic growth
• more languages (now: English + Polish)
• wiki+blog combo
• Web API
• open-source the code, code contributions
• ........
• profit! ;-)