Wikipedia at number 6

According to ComScore’s “Worldwide Ranking of Top Web Properties” Wikipedia is number 6.

BBC Innovation Lab

Cathy Ma and I went to the first of this year’s BBC Innovation Labs in Brighton.

Met some interesting people and gained some insights into the way that BBC new media work. Looking forward to working with Cathy on some pitches over the next few weeks/months.

Tried to explain the motivations for particpating with Patrick Dunn’s brilliant: “What’s in it for me” vs “What of me is in it”.

Is Wikipedia the new Google?

Last week in London I was talking about how I’ve started skipping Google searches and using Wikipedia instead.

I said: “If I want to know ‘anything’ about ‘anything’ I use Google. But if I want to know ’something’ about ’something’ I use Wikipedia” – I think that explains it.

I just Googled “Is Wikipedia the new Google” and found that I’m not the first person to think this:

Vidya Ananthanarayanan (April 2005)
Tomahawk (February 2006)

and

My Green Jar (June 2006)

Door-to-door internet sales

Raj Kapor from the Venture Capitalist company Mayfield has written an interesting article in Business Week on-line where he mentions that Baidu (the biggest search engine in China) sell ads “door-to-door” – sounds like Yellowikis plan to recruit student editors – not to mention Dick Larkin’s new project.

Drupal vs MediaWiki

I finally got around to setting up Batan City as a wiki. It was about 10 years ago that I first discussed the idea with Tatiana and Rosie. I took a long look at Drupal as an alternative CMS but the effort required to set up Drupal seemed so much greater than the MediaWiki package I finally opted for what I know (and love). I will probably regret it later – particularly when I want to start restricting editing rights… we will see.

YouTube Googled…

Reuters are talking about $1.65bn…

Why don’t Brin and Page add real shareholder value and buy the PR North Korea? They could save the world and set up MNorthKorean (like MTurk but scary) and get Google a seat on the Security Council of the UN.

a9 neutered

No more blockview from a9 . I wonder if they might give it to Yellowikis? Mechanical Turk still seems to be running.

The only HIT that Amazon Research seems to be offering on MTurk is $0.50 for a scan of your grocery bill plus a version of it as an excel spreadsheet.

I wonder what that’s all about?

ezPCwiki Googled

Google indexed Ivan’s new wiki 8 days after he told them about the site.

Working at home publishers

Random Flickr links lead me to Steve Bowbrick’s blog which took me to Jay Rosen’s New Assignment.Net that led me to Paul Bass’ article on “Creating the New Haven Independent” on PressThink. Much of the debate in the comments was about revenue models which reminded me of The Best of and My Mag franchises. Sales and marketing people are just as interested in finding new opportunities as local newspapers dissolve in the face of Craig Newmarks’ lists.

Now I’m wondering if one of the big advertising groups would give Yellowikis $100,000 as a start-up gift like Reuters did for New Assignment.Net.