From recent buzz and confirmation from two trusted sources, it sounds like Yahoo closed its rumored acquisition of Joe Kraus’ Jotspot, and will be entering the wiki market. No official announcement of this, or any indication of price (buy Yahoo is famously stingy).
I’m putting this rumor at 85% likely, partially because Yahoo has a pre-existing business relationship with PBWiki to create wikis for Yahoo Groups. More as this develops. Our previous posts on JotSpot and its products are at this link.
How stingy are we talking about here?
I think wikio.com will be a big player!
http://www.wikio.cn
http://www.wikio.com.cn
Well, if we’ve been acquired, then I’m a little out of the loop. But, hey, I love the exposure.
We just created an affiliate program, so, Mike, maybe you should join and make some money from all the traffic you’re sending us!
Almost forgot the URL:
affiliates.jot.com
Yahoo with aquisitions is like Google with Beta services – lots of them, lots of them languishing. I still can’t add Flickr or Del.icio.us content to My Yahoo! for instance…
How about this? The PBwiki and Jot teams can roshambo for the deal.
I think they’d beat us in tug-of-war, though. They have a few more employees than we do.
Ryan, glad I’m not the only one out of the loop!
Especially since, well, I just started today
Ryan or Adam, you guys must be getting hammered right now because your site has slowed to a crawl for me. I’m trying to set up an account and give you some money. I guess it’s a good problem to have, though.
It’d be good to see this integrated somewhat into Yahoo! Groups. Not that Yahoo would do anything sensible like that.
Ken Norton must be fired up.
I don’t know if there’s any truth to this rumor, but former Yahoo Ken Norton has been spotted on campus quite a bit recently
Hey, I heard that rumor too, but it’s a small valley. I heard they are gonna call it MySpot….Just kidding!
Yahoo’s strategy is to corner the market of Paul Graham’s startup school presenters. After locking up JotSpot, look for them to go after WSGR, Hummer Winblad and then finally the mother of all LBOs to take out Google itself. You heard it it here first!
perhaps yahoo is acquiring all those companies so that possible competitors don’t do it first!
“It’d be good to see this integrated somewhat into Yahoo! Groups. Not that Yahoo would do anything sensible like that.”
http://pbwiki.com/yahoo/
from my Feb ‘05 post, an initial shopping list for Yahoo is here:
http://500hats....lidation_2.html
(note: Flickr was bought after the post… no apologies for new startups that have arrived since that time, but plenty more out there)
Rod: You can add Flickr and del.icio.us content to My Yahoo. What about it isn’t working for you?
Interesting… Ive been watching Jotspot for a while, they have a great platform. If its true – congrats Jotspot!
Other startups people who compete in the space are:
http://www.socialtext.com
http://www.centraldesktop.com
Jeremy – note that this is yahoo.ca. I can find RSS feeds from Flick, but what I’d really like is a photo uploader – seeing as my yahoo and flickr accounts are linked, I’d like to be able to add stuff to my Flickr stream right out of MyYahoo!
In my case, I can add a Yahoo! Photos slideshow, but there’s no flickr or delicios or upcoming.org services at all.
Perhaps its different for the core yahoo.com experience, or maybe I’m just missing it, but whether its deeply buried or non-existent, the integration looks pretty superficial.
Personally, I’m loving the yahoo-bought API’s – I’ve been integrating Upcoming.org and Flickr content into BlockRocker like crazy, and its been a great experience.
I wonder if this is a similar “get us in the news for tons of publicity” type of stunt.
Likely move considering Google bought Writely. Find out who else Yahoo! or Google might buy at Under the Radar on June 14 – http://underthe...dia-conference/
Just spoke to my JotSpot contact, who is currently swamped with calls about this issue.
Basically, but perhaps that’s what he was told/allowed to say.
Either way, I’ll believe when I see an official announcement.
Sorry…what I was trying to say was:
Just spoke to my JotSpot contact, who is currently swamped with calls about this issue.
Basically, he said that there was NO truth to the rumor, but perhaps that’s what he was told/allowed to say.
Otherwise, I’ll believe it when I see the official announcement.
Yahoo!/Google/Microsoft could roll their own wiki product in two months… I don’t see them buying a company for it.
But if they did, EditMe.com is a much better product.
Next to Blog, Wiki will become the next “hot” thing to buy. I am seeing more new types of wiki from startups. What makes Jotspot “hot” are their gallery applications and JDC. They have more products built on wiki compared to other wiki startups. They don’t have the best appearance but slowly and painfully they are getting there. At least they are updating the main site very often these days and they improve the usability, content and navigation a lot after getting “Meow” at.
hello,
I am very intersting by the hot spot family concept, the graphism is very cool for a wiki,
do you know the same concept but in FRENCH to do it with my family,
thank a lot ??
Mathieu a french websurfer…
Looks like Google have actually acquired Jotspot…
http://googlesy...ki-company.html
This is quite interesting… But I dont see the alexa rank go up anymore now that they got aquired