August 31, 2006

Wiki's: Passing Fad or Business Tool

There's only two things about technology for business: Passing fads or serious business tools. At one point I thought a Wiki was a passing fad but I'm beginning to realize that it's not. It can be, like blogging, a serious tool for business.

A Wiki, unlike a standard web page, enables authorized uses to edit the page (or site). This makes it easier to collaborate on a project instead of millions of emails flying back and forth.

Forbes has a VERY good article on the benefits of a Wiki and writes Don't feel like shelling out thousands of dollars for complex project-management software from Microsoft? You can set up an easy-to-use "wiki" for far less. Want to boost your page rank on big search engines like Google and Yahoo! ? A wiki works well. And unlike blogs and discussion boards, which unfold in relentlessly chronological order, wikis group related information into defined buckets that can be searched and edited quickly and easily. (Hence the term wiki--coined a decade ago by programmer Howard Cunningham--which means "hurry quick" in Hawaiian).

I've been playing around with Wet Paint's Wiki service and it's VERY slick and easy to use.

Smallbusiness.com is a Wiki you should check out.

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