Webware

We've covered the wiki company Wetpaint's experiments in expanding its products several times over the past two years. The company has had a solid wiki service for consumers since 2005. It has continued to improve the core product by layering in the capability to embed widgets in wiki pages (now pretty much a standard feature), and it's even tried to meld wikis with social networking through a Facebook app. Today the company is heading off in yet another direction with Wetpaint Injected, a service that enables content sites to not just embed wikis in their sites, but to integrate wiki content and community deeply into their architecture. It's a smart model.

Wetpaint Injected is a simple concept. It lets users create content in Web site, and it lets the site's publishers make sure that the new content fits in their look and feel. For example, if we wanted to have a database of company info for each product we cover, but didn't want to actually have Webware editors write that content, we could create a Wetpaint Injected form that collected structured data (company name, list of execs, location, description, etc.), and embed that in our reviews. Users could edit that content using Wetpaint's tools, which are quite good, and add Wetpaint widgets or even additional pages. Wetpaint maintains wiki-style revision histories so changes can be rolled back, argued over, and so on.

Web publishers can turn their readers in to contributors with Wetpaint Injected.

Wiki content is no substitute for forums or blog comment threads. Nor is it a suitable replacement for a content type like user reviews, where you want users to see multiple opinions, not just the one that the site's user-editors agree on. But it is a strong way to get users involved with any site; Wetpaint co-founder Kevin Flaherty says the service, "helps any site become a social publishing site," and I agree. I will look forward to seeing this capability even on commerce sites; I imagine my favorite computer hardware site NewEgg using this capability for building out a robust specs and capabilities pages for the products it sells, for example.

Wetpaint Injected content is not hosted at Wetpaint, it is actually embedded in customer sites. This means the site owner gets all that user content indexed by search engines, which is a big plus. For comparison's sake, some plug-in comment systems, like Disqus, host all content on their site, depriving customers of SEO benefit. Also, since the content is integrated into the site, any of the site's native social features can tap into it. Again, in contrast, Google's new Friend Connect service is not actually hosted on the site itself, but appears on a site via an i-Frame, so cannot interact with a site's user database.

The downside of this deep integration is that implementing Wetpaint Injected takes a bit of work. It's got to be embedded in site's content management system; it is not a simple drop-in service. It requires hands-on participation of Wetpaint engineers, at least at launch. The company does hope to make Wetpaint Injected self-serve in the third quarter, with plug-ins for popular blog platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Wetpaint's default business arrangement is that it takes a portion of advertising revenues on Wetpaint Injected pages.

Customers at launch include Flixster and IGN. The company is also announcing that it just closed a third funding round of $25 million, bringing the total funds raised to almost $40 million.

Short version: Wetpaint might be one to watch.

Long version: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has alerted us to a dark horse candidate in the race to dominate the land of wikis. It's Wetpaint, a Seattle-based service we haven't heard a whole lot from lately. The reason, Arrington says, is that it's positioning itself to be a player in niche social networks, not just mini-Wikipedias.

The easy-to-create wiki service pulled in 3 million page views in March, according to ComScore numbers, compared with 3.8 million for Ning, the well-funded social-network creator helmed by Marc Andreessen. Wetpaint also claims 900,000 wikis have been created, far more than the 263,000 that Ning counts (though who knows how many of those are legitimate and/or active). While Ning's way ahead in traffic, a few months ago Wetpaint released a set of features to ramp up social-networking activity on the site, with friends lists, news feeds, member profiles, and Yelp-style "compliments" now in the mix.

There are also 70 "sponsored" Wetpaint wikis, like the fan wikis created by cable network Showtime for each of its programs.

Wetpaint is officially launching their whiteboard wiki app for Facebook tomorrow morning, although it's been alive and kicking in Facebook's apps directory for the past two weeks. The idea behind it is about as simple as it gets--just stick an entire Wetpaint wiki inside of Facebook, and edit things with your Facebook friends. In addition to a blank canvas to do whatever you want with, the service has also included student-geared templates to get you going, including a notes tool, party planner, and dorm hall wiki. The real draw here is that you'll be able to start making and sharing Wetpaint wikis without the need to sign up for the service, and be able to be share any of your creations via URL to people outside of Facebook. The only catch is that your Facebook-created wikis won't show up on Wetpaint's main site, at least not yet.

Make widget-filled wikis right inside of Facebook using Wetpaint's Whiteboard Wiki app.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

What I don't get about the whole app is why you'd want to use some of these templates inside of Facebook. For example, the selling point of the party invitation app is that you can set up RSVPs and upload photos and videos. You can already do all these things in Facebook using the first-party events app that everyone's got by default. The same thing goes for class notes, which encourages grouping and discussion forums--something which is also available for everyone right off the bat with Facebook groups.

Speaking of groups, Wetpaint also goes a step beyond, by auto-creating a wiki for every group you're a member of. On the surface, this might seem like a handy way to help you get started in your wiki indeavors, although it feels more like the service is attempting to drag participation and interaction away from Facebook's group, and into their own domain.

The real saving grace of this app is that you can add third-party widgets onto one big page along with the rest of your content--something I had wanted after taking a look at the Amnesty Hypercube Facebook app last week. The fact that you can drop any old embed code to create a new widget means you're getting a lot of extensibility with one app. This is the kind of thing that can open up creativity and participation. Trying to piggyback on Facebook's successful, and easy-to-use features with a whole other system--not so much. Hopefully Wetpaint can find a balance.

Wetpaint, the wiki editing and hosting service, added private and group messaging this morning. The new service allows users to communicate one-on-one just like e-mail, and gives wiki administrators a new way to communicate to those moderating and contributing to their pages.

Sending a message in the service is pretty simple. If you're signed in, just click a user's name to pull up a "send message" pop-up. If you want to send out a group message, just start typing in names and the service will pull them up (like Gmail does).

In comparison, wiki juggernaut Wikipedia relies on private e-mail and threaded discussion called "Talk" for member-to-member communication. That site also has dedicated IRC chat rooms and a listing of chat client screen names for Wikipedia contributors. Wetpaint's new system makes things a little simpler by consolidating chatter into one medium, and integrating it into the site.

Previous Wetpaint coverage here and here.

When you reply to a message, Wetpaint will automatically add the previous messages in the thread below. It's just like e-mail.

To privately message another user, just click on his or her name.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Wetpaint on Tuesday is upgrading its wiki editing and hosting service with the ability to embed widgets, or mini-applications, into a Web page.

The "Easy Edit" button on Wetpaint wikis now lets people include a widget on a page, which can be anything from a YouTube video to a group Web calendar. The editing tool presents a variety of options, including adding RSS feeds and links to popular video-sharing sites services.

Rather make you write the HTML by hand, the Wetpaint editor generates it for you. The company developed the widget feature in response to customers, who are craving more customization, according to CEO Ben Elowitz.

The Wetpaint service also has a "suggest a link" feature, which is meant to make it easier to find related links within a wiki.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For people looking to set up a simple Web site but don't want have a bottleneck of one person posting content, Wetpaint looks pretty compelling.

It's designed to be easy to use, which means you don't have to learn wiki syntax to post. The service is free and financed by Web ads. There are no limits on storage.

The company is also going after business customers. Elowitz said that some media companies are starting to use Wetpaint's hosted wikis to build community sites, like CBS's Jericho community wiki, where customers can post information and interact with the show's producers.