The beauty of the web lies in the very thing that makes webophobes run away screaming: anyone can say anything online. Microblogging tools such as Twitter, social networking websites such as Facebook, and knowledge collection platforms such as wikis make sharing easy for any individual with a web browser. In fact, sharing on the web is easier than figuring out the way around the dead ends of Shmeisani.
It is this simplicity that gives way to the amazing nature of the web. With millions of connected individuals clicking, linking, and adding, a serendipitous process of natural selection takes place with the mess of data. This has been the case since the early days of the internet. In 1998, Google’s co-founders wrote “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, the paper that served as a founding document of Google’s groundbreaking search algorithm. In the paper, they said, “PageRank capitalizes on the uniquely democratic characteristic of the web by using its vast link structure as an organizational tool.” In other words, the most important and useful information would rise to the top through a process of natural selection as the “importance” of a webpage is determined by looking at what other people are linking to. As such, the web is built by millions of people from around the world, who all simultaneously act as content creators, editors, and consumers.
The web is a true democracy.
The wiki concept is perhaps one of the more interesting (and controversial) applications of natural selection on the internet. A wiki allows users to communally add and edit information in different wiki pages, which are then linked together to form a database for browsing and searching through data. As people visit the wiki and perform their own additions and changes, the wiki undergoes a natural selection process where the information is edited, styled, and expanded, resulting in the evolution of the wiki. This could be private, semi-private, or completely public; private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them. According to Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the famous wiki encyclopedia: “The idea that a lot of people have of Wikipedia is that it’s some emergent phenomenon — the wisdom of mobs, swarm intelligence, that sort of thing — thousands and thousands of individual users each adding a little bit of content and out of this emerges a coherent body of work.”
Wikipedia might be the most popular usage of wikis, but as people become better accustomed with the concept, different use case scenarios are being experimented with, not least in the business world. Wikis can serve as a collaboration zones to better spread corporate ideas, keep track of documentation, plan projects, or organize sales spreadsheets.
The most obvious usage for wikis at work is as an internal documentation directory. Anyone who has worked with a team on one project can tell you what a nightmare documentation can be. Documents get passed around, and it’s not easy to keep track. Is the latest version of that press release the one in my inbox or the file called “PR_Final_1.doc” on my desktop? It could even be a bigger disaster if the person with, say, the numbers, is on a biking trip in Vietnam, where even a BlackBerry goes through signal suicide. A wiki would successfully ensure that all data is changed, edited, and evolved centrally, and is as easy to use and access as Microsoft Word.
A less obvious and perhaps more interesting corporate usage for wikis is in the field of user-driven innovation. Companies can improve their products and services by establishing a wiki feedback loop with their clients, fans, and users. It is the aggregated work of testing, brainstorming, and even complaining that results in an innovative effort. Wikis can further be used to simplify planning events (and planning in general), keeping track of what is discussed in meetings, developing documents, and brainstorming.
The good news is that it is very easy to get started with wikis. There are many free inexpensive hosted solutions, and many others that you can install on your own company network. The quickest way to start is by using it to share non-static information with your employees, such as client lists, user manuals, and employee directories.
It is still early in the lifecycle of the corporate wiki, and it will likely evolve a lot over the years. In fact, Forrester research estimates that enterprises will spend at least $451 million on wikis as a business medium. In all cases, it is clear that today’s work environments need a framework that helps employees share and collaborate (what are the chances of your office harboring a man whose job is to press a button continuously all day?) By supporting such knowledge sharing, wikis are helping reinvent the way we work.
May the wiki be with you.
*”Wiki” is “fast” in Hawiian.
[Originally published in Venture, January 2011]
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