This guy isn’t a serial entrepreuneur, he’s a parallel disaster, perhaps a contender for the worst thing that has hit the internet this year (and last for that matter).

Mindtouch appear to have earned quite nicely out of their association with Gotts, and it looks like they are now using code they were paid for by Gotts (if they ever got paid) on the new site. I suspect they are taking care of themselves as opposed to taking care of any community, but that is what business is all about

But what about the poor people who were conned into financing Gotts?

As many of you have likely heard, Wiki.com is shutting down by January 25, 2007. If you are one of the thousands of users who registered a Wiki.com site have no fear. Your content is safe. You will be receiving an email shortly from MindTouch regarding this issue. The gist of this follows. John Gotts, the owner of Wiki.com, has agreed to transfer all wiki sites to MindTouch. The agreement does not include the Wiki.com domain. We at MindTouch have already begun migrating the wikis to new servers. Your ability to preserve your content is very important to MindTouch. We too were concerned and are very glad Gotts has kindly allowed this transfer. We agreed to this transfer with such short notice because our technology powered Wiki.com from the beginning and we are intimately familiar with the backend. That’s why we are confident we can restore the site in time and make improvements to it over time. Our most immediate concern is, of course, preserving what you have created. We’ll be providing additional details shortly on the new domain, features, and services. MindTouch will take care of you and your community.

Aaron Fulkerson

Free Knowledge.

Despite the current redirection of wiki.com to Wikia, we are not affiliated with this site, but hope to help wiki.com users if this unfortunate rumor turns out to be true.

Wikia apparently knows nothing about what Gotts is doing according to executives at Wikia. It looks like Gotts could never get the new and improved wiki software up and running and this Winter apparently lost MindTouch’s support.

In the meantime Gotts made the following statement today (1/15/07):

All wikis will be removed in the next 72 hours.
We are sorry to say that this did not work out.
Kind regards,
John

Jogn Gotts, przedsiębiorca, który zgodził się zapłacić 3 miliony dolarów za domenę Wiki.com, by następnie ogłaszać wszem i wobec, że ma zamiar “zabić Wikipedię” - właśnie się poddał. Wystarczyło zaledwie kilka miesięcy…

I think john gotts is not new to this he has been there and done many sucessful deal in the past , but surely not as big as this (wiki), i think this shall payoff soon or later but for sure.

-Dave ”

If you only knew..

p.s
laon.com (yes, typo) was sold couple of days ago for a little over 500k.. no site.

-Dave

http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

January 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm

This is the most speculative TechCrunch post ever. Gotts “agreed to pay” $3 million (it’s not clear if he handed over the money yet) for the Wiki.com domain, and “reportedly” (not confirmed) said he was going to “kill” an inanimate web site (he crazy).

Now he “may have” given up his alleged plans (or not). Meanwhile, Wikia CEO Gil Penchina had no comment, a whois lookup shows the domain is still with its original owners. and the whole writeup ends with the ringing conclusion: “we’ll see”.

Why not throw in a bigfoot sighting while you’re at it?
”

Ditto. the original article was of the same caliber.

- almost exactly the same idea: let people create their Wikis and provide community-related tools,
- a domain never known before, instead of throwing away 3m$
- no news at Slashdot, Digg, even TechCrunch
- total development and early marketing cost: 6 000$

But somehow I had it “more right” than Wiki.com and the results are:
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ikidot.com

- nicely growing community (did Wiki.com care about its community?)
- over 6000 registered users in a few months and over 2000 _active_ users
- more than 5000 visitors daily
- 3000 page edits daily
- the numbers are growing 30% monthly

IMHO creating Wiki solutions is NOT about the money you put in the domain, but about an idea you have about functionality and building communities. You have to give users creative tools too.

OK, IMHO Wikidot.com vs. Wiki.com: 1:0

michal frackowiak
http://www.wikidot.com

BTW: could I be covered by TechCrunch at least?

But kudos for the person that sold this guy on it. A fool and his money are quickly parted. When John Gotts sat down at the table to negotiate this deal, he should have asked himself “Who’s the fool at the table?” and when he didn’t see the fool, should have realized that it was him.