After JotSpot sold to Google for $50+ million, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize venture capitalists would be dabbling a bit more in this space. So I am not at all surprised to report that Wetpaint, the Seattle based wiki company that we’ve raved about in the past, is announcing a $9.5 million Series B round of financing today, with investments from Accel Partners as well as previous investors Trinity Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures. Their Series A round, in October 2005, was $5.25 million.
Wetpaint’s key competitor, Wikia, has had more traction with users according to Alexa and Compete statistics, and claims 2.5 million page views per day. Wetpaint doesn’t disclose page views, but CEO Ben Elowitz told me they are “doubling quicker than every 2 months.” Wetpaint has a much more newbie-friendly user interface than Wikia, and is targeting a different audience. Frankly, it’s just a lot more pleasant to look at a typical Wetpaint site than a Wikia one, although the content on Wikia is often much deeper than the equivalent on Wetpaint. Wetpaint says they now have 150,000 unique wikis and over 2.5 million pieces of content contributed by users since launching last June.
Wetpaint has the smell of a company that’s built solid software and is seeing good user uptake. If they can keep expenses under control they will be a likely takeover candidate in the near future. Everyone except Google is taking a hard look at the wiki space right now.
For a good overview of wikis by feature, see WikiMatrix.
I, for one, still prefer pbwiki.
We’re thrilled to see this kind of activity in the wiki space — it’s clearly in the early days of the category and the kinds of deals happening lately are great validation of the power of wikis in all sorts of market niches.
All of us [PBwiki, Wikia, WetPaint, Atlassian, SocialText, etc] seem to be settling into different slices of the ‘easy editing and sharing for your groups, your business and the public’ concept, and running hard to feel out the potential of the marketplace. I’m personally bullish on the success of most of the plays involved — there’s plenty of untapped demand to go around and a great variety of interesting monetization paths exist.
[Ian, thanks for the props - watch for big improvements coming soon!]
Competition is good for the overall health of Industry and Market development. Competition keeps all participants agile and market responsive and constantly looking for4 new ways to impress costomers. May dynamicism prevail.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
Sorry, naive question: does it REALLY take that much money to run a wiki solution that is not even comparable in popularity with main blogging services?
Compare wordpress.com, livejournal.com, even the new vox.com, multiply.com with wetpaint.com (try other leading wiki hosting like wikia.com or pbwiki.com) – this is not even comparable!
http://www.alex...om+multiply.com
Anyway, this is great news that investors see the potential in Wikis.
when is someone going to snatch up techcrunch or have they already and mike arrington is still the head author!? and just not reported on it to keep the integrity of the blog hmm…..just for kicks
I am sorry but I just don’t buy Alexa ratings.
slightly offtopic why don’t google have a public output for websites web analylitics in a simular fastion to Alexa.
Another me-too makes it to the cover of Techcrunch, and I predict that this will donkey will soon be relegated to the dead pool. Big Funding being poured into a site that has stolen someone else’s idea and this is great news????
I am voting for this story to be put into the CRAP NEWS forum subject.
Filmator, how do you define “stolen idea”? Once the first wiki is created, is it “reserved”?
Wetpaint did not invent wikis. They just made them easier to use. In fact the easiest.
(In fact it’s not even a wiki; rather a wiki-blog-forum hybrid, but that’s another matter)
“Everyone except Google is taking a hard look at the wiki space right now”, how can you be so sure about Google, Mike?
Didn’t Google buy jotspot about 2 months ago? Surely that is them looking into the space?
I don’t read Mike’s mind, but I guess what he stated was everyone is looking at wikis except Google, since they already have one – JotSpot.
Both JotSpot and WetPaint have neat Wysiwyg editors. Wikia doesn’t. No Wiki solution will ever get into mainstream without a good editor.
However, why does it cost so much to run Wetpaint? Unless they bribe someone with ,,growth potential” powerpoint slides, there is no way they can sustain their business.
@the kid. No wiki soution will ever go mainstream without a good editor? How about Wikipedia!!??!!!!??
doubling quicker than every 2 month
Doubling what? Page views? That’s easy to do with a wiki.
According to a Seattle PI story (btw check out Cook’s blog, pretty good) WetPaint does the wiki for LOST on ABC. Didn’t know that, thankfully they have branched out to professional customers like this.
As for Mike’s comment about WetPaint looking better than Wikipedia: that’s nothing that a little CSS tweaks can’t fix. Yes the visuals are important but that shouldn’t separate one wiki from another as they are all basically the same.
I can’t see how there’s much room in this space beyond Wikia and SocialText.
Interesting. The wiki space I feel is still wideopen. I know I made several accounts at times on almost every free wiki site when I was going through the campus magzine I’m the editor of.
My question is how many users like me they have? Users that try and abandon. Mainstream wiki adoption seems to me a lot like blogs – folks start it, then forget it after the project is over.
-Zaid
Whatever happened to Jotspot? They were acquired by Google in October and nothing has come out of their camp since. Users are complaining of crappy service, Jotspot can’t do anything to fix it at the moment thanks to their new overlords, and they can’t accept any new users either.
Will Jotspot go the way of Measure Map and just be a nice new Google property (that is, presumably, no longer allowed for use by the public while Googlers use and abuse).
I like the idea behind their name, WetPaint. But I don’t like the WetPaint name at all.
Congratulations to Ben and team
They’ve built a nice service and appear to have corporate interest, much like SocialText and others.
Gil
This give a strong case on my wiki selection especially those folks ask me repeatedly why I didn’t eat Peanut Butter locally. I have prepared my outline of speech if Nathan Schmidt bumps into me in the area.
Wetpaint may be able to evolve from social wiki to corporate wiki if Wetpaint smartly improves user interface design to downplay their weakness. Wetpaint may be able to expand into multiple commercial markets if they can executive a good product strategy. While strong areas are in good place, the success will depend on how hard Wetpaint can work on their weaknesses.
If business is managed well with reasonable burn rate and clear sign of revenue model, Wetpaint will be singing a good tune along with other Web 2.0 headliners like Linkedin.com.
Wiki is still under explored at Web 2.0 stage. I expect greater things happening in wikis. There will be something coming after AJAX.
Jotpot may have to stay painfully quiet until they can emerge from their transformation. With their talented development team, I have confidence that Jotspot won’t disappoint users.
Back to Peanut Butter, I personally think it is still in the farm area. Nothing is wrong. Some folks love milk with Peanut Butter and want to share their Peanut Butter love badly. Some like painting in wet pink.
Congratulation to Ben and Wetpaint team!
Mediawiki has been an outstanding platform for establishing; http://www.wikistock.com
Mediawiki is the most solid web site engine I’ve ever used. Just wish it was a little more up to speed on web 2.0 technologies.