Collaboration: Riding the Wiki Wave

Riding the Wiki Wave
Magazine News Story/Aug 28, 2006

How many millions does it take to make a bubble? Don’t ask John Gotts. He just paid $3 million for the domain name wiki.com.

Mr. Gotts, an entrepreneur with a history of buying speculative domain names, says it was money well-spent. “Good domains allow you to have highly targeted traffic coming to your web site with no ad or marketing costs,” he says.

Wiki.com, which has been up for sale for nearly a year, offers the tools for anyone to create a wiki, a type of web site that facilitates collaborative authoring. “Clearly the future is wikis,” he says. “But there is no place for a grandma or small business to create a space of their own on the web where they can put up their information or content and give access to others.”

Mr. Gotts is no ordinary speculator. A few years ago, he made his millions selling an anti-spyware product, PCSafe, which took off only after he bought the domain, adware.com, and hosted the product on it, he says.

Similarly, the wiki.com domain could be a sure way to attract users. Mr. Gotts declined to reveal how many users currently visit the web site, but according to traffic rankings site Alexa, traffic to market leader JotSpot far outstrips that to wiki.com. Moreover, JotSpot charges for its tools while wiki.com gives them away for free.

A market consolidation could be looming, says Peter O’Kelly, research director at the Burton Group. In addition to proprietary wiki tools from startups, open-source wiki products have also emerged in the market, and there is bound to be a shakedown, he says.

Mr. Gott’s move is likely to be unsettling news for startups like JotSpot, PBwiki, Wikia, and SocialText, which sell wiki products to consumers and businesses. “If I were a vendor, I would be apprehensive that the hype-to-reality index is getting out of control,” says Mr. O’Kelly, in reference to the frothy wiki market.