Wild about Wikis

A while back I said to a Red Herring reporter that I thought that wikis were "a fad - nothing more, nothing less."

Tonight I met Ross Mayfield and he mentioned it, or perhaps called me on it.

Okay, so I was caught up in the rush of actually having a Red Herring reporter ask for my opinion so I was a bit brash. What Ross and Socialtext are up to is very compelling and cool and bringing into a corporate setting makes a lot of sense for collaboration.

What I meant by "a fad" was that it has a lot of buzz right now but really is an evolutionary step along a path toward something much bigger, which is a two-way web. Maybe I"ll coin that term: 2WW :) And what I meant by "nothing more, nothing less", is that the "nothing less" part is not to be overlooked: fads are powerful and shape our culture more than almost anything else. So it was, in a backhanded sort of way, a token of respect. I should be so lucky to be surfing the cresting wave of a bona-fide fad (I'm not coining that tongue-twisted phrase).

It's about time that the network topology of the web evolved to be more push-me-pull-you instead of "posting forms" as a way of pushing things upstream.

So anyway I publicly take back my criticism of wikis, and I appreciate the intelligent, diplomatic, thoughtful conversation I had with Ross Mayfield. Thanks, Ross.