Written on April 23, 2008 – 5:30 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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Since its incredible rise (and with no fall in sight), Wikipedia has been giving the old-school encyclopedias - the ones that are made from paper - a hard time. Some even say that the online user-edited reference book will eventually rule out the paper version like Brittanica. German publishing giant Bertelsmann now wants to prove those critics wrong by publishing the world’s first reference book based on the work of web volunteers: the Wikipedians.
“The Wikipedia encyclopedia will help allow knowledge to be spread worldwide and become more accessible,” the publishing director at Bertelsmann Lexicon, Beate Varnhorn, said in a statement.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
“The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia” will include 50,000 of the most popular search terms of the last two years and will be in stores from September.
According to Varnhorn, “The abridged, one-volume print edition will reach new target groups which will get to know the Wikipedia project and take part in it.” I’m sure this is right, though I doubt whether those groups will have the mind-set that is needed for an user-edited encyclopedia. I mean, it’s one thing Wikipedia is an online medium, but the fact that ordinary people have enough authority for editing a reference book might be a little hard to take for some people.
Anyhow, it’s a charming initiative that explores and broadens the boundaries of publishing. Especially as one euro from every 19,95 euro copy goes to the German chapter of Wikimedia, the non-profit group behind Wikipedia.
Written on April 8, 2008 – 3:38 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
On Friday April 4, in the afternoon the audience of The Next Web Conference watched the world premiere of the documentary The truth according to Wikipedia from IJsbrand van Veelen.
The video led to heated debate between the maker of the documentary and some of the audience members and even during the party afterwards people where still discussing the video. Tessa Sterkenburg posted a follow-up post here on Sunday which received 17 comments (so far) and even Larry Sanger (from Citizendium), one of the people interviewed in the documentary, pitches in.
Last night it was shown on Dutch television (VPRO Backlight) and a few minutes ago it has been uploaded to YouTube too. This is one video that everyone who has anything to do with the Internet should see. The questions it raises are far from answered so I look forward to your ideas about it in the comments here. Some of the leading questions in the documentary were: Should we let just anyone state his or her opinion or should we leave the publishing of information to the experts? Could the openness of the web be dangerous? Who has the right to establish truth?
But first, the movie:
UPDATE: here is an older 50 minutes documentary from IJsbrand van Veelen which he made in 2006 which gives an in-depth look in the world of Google. Some of the questions addressed here are: “What if all the world’s information would be available and easy to find? What if all the news, all books, all texts, photographs and videos would be collected in one place, and made available, always and everywhere?”.
(more…)
Written on April 1, 2008 – 4:07 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Right after the launch of this blog, we published an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Though this interview concerned the launch of Wikia Search, we also talked a bit about his claim to fame. “People would have questions about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. Well, it’s very difficult to fool a community.” So Wales believes in the power of his immense community. Of course he does, it’s his baby after all. But do WE really know what we’re using?
On The Next Web we’ll show the premiere of a documentary that takes a better look at Wikipedia. Backlight plunges into the story behind Wikipedia. Is it a revolution, or pure hype?
Director IJsbrand van Veelen - famous for his Google documentary - goes looking for the truth behind Wikipedia. Only five people are employed by the company, and all its activities are financed by donations and subsidies. The online encyclopedia that everyone can contribute to and revise is now even bigger than the illustrious Encyclopedia Britannica. He tries to answer several questions:
- Does this spell the end for traditional institutions of knowledge such as Britannica?
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And should we applaud this development as progress or mourn it as a loss?
- How reliable is Wikipedia?
- Do “the people” really hold the lease on wisdom?
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And since when do we believe that information should be free for all?
Van Veelen managed to get some interesting and authoritative people for his camera. Of course the before mentioned Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger (the since-fired co-founder of Wikipedia, now head of Wiki spin-off Citizendium), the infamous Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy), Phoebe Ayers (a Wikipedian in California), Ndesanjo Macha (Swahili Wikipedia, digital activist), Tim O’Reilly (CEO of O’Reilly Media, the “inventor” of Web 2.0), Charles Leadbeater (philosopher and author of We Think, about crowdsourcing), and Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica).
The questions surrounding Wikipedia lead to a bigger discussion of Web 2.0. You know, the Andrew Keen debate: 2.0 sites would appear to provide new freedom and opportunities for undiscovered talent and unheard voices, but just where does the boundary lie between expert and amateur? Who will survive according to the laws of this new “digital Darwinism”? Are equality and truth really reconcilable ideals? And most importantly, has the Internet brought us wisdom and truth, or is it high time for a cultural counterrevolution?
Written on February 27, 2008 – 7:09 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Checkser is a service that allows people to create public checklists, whatever the subject. Founder Marijn Deurloo came up with the idea during his brainstorm with his mentor, only a few weeks ago, and started to develop it right-a-way. The result is a very simple and clean-looking site.
You can look up checklists by browsing through the tags, user history pages or using the search engine. Some useful checklists I have found: a fishing trip list, Bottle soccer, Financial Management and a Web standards checklist.
KillerStartups reviewed the service as well, and they were pretty enthusiastic about it. Yet they did miss something: ‘Some more web 2.0 features would also be nice, such as user profiles’. I’ve emailed Deurloo to find out if he will add features like that. He replied: “Checkser is currently linked to the openID-initiative for linking to profiles, so authors can make themselves known by entering their openID-id. A link to their openID profile is then added to the “history”-page of a checklist. In the future, more social features like ratings will be added.”
I hope he will, since the anonymous approach might actually threaten the quality of the content. Especially since the checklists have a ‘read more’ link that the creator of the list can use to link to his own page. Deurloo deliberately added that function so that checklists can be used as teasers for companies. Yet it could be too tempting for gambling sites and other infamous low quality content sites to use it as an extra ad space.
So I’ve asked Deurloo how he will make sure that the quality of the checklist will remain good. Deurloo: “I’m hoping that the same mechanism that works well for Wikipedia will also work for checklists. Users help keeping the quality up, by being able to revert to previous versions of checklists and branching off those.” The self-control approach doesn’t really work yet, since the tag ‘test‘ contains 34 test checklists. More traffic and users might end this problem.
Unlike Wikipedia, Checkser does have a business model. It’s not much yet, Deurloo uses the Amazon affiliate program. “By suggesting relevant books to the checklists, I hope a little money can be made.” Makes sense, since he attracts a Getting Things Done crowd, and they’re generally eager to buy books.
But Deurloo has more good plans for the future: “As several businesses have already asked me, I will be creating a “pro”-version with company-private checklists for use on intranets for a small subscription fee. Kind of like the Basecamp and Backpack websites do.” So Deurloo can soon mark the ‘create pro version’ point on the ‘How to run a successful Internet service’.
Written on January 7, 2008 – 9:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After waiting for a year, it finally happened today: Jimmy Wales launched an alpha version of Wikia Search. After such a long wait, people have high expectations. Unfortunately, Wales didn’t manage to live up to them. TechCrunch’s Micheal Arrington called it ‘one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing’ and ‘an inexcusable waste of time’. Stan Schroeder from Mashable wasn’t very pleased either: “Wikia Search looks like something that was cooked by two guys in one month in a basement”.
“We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it.”
We interviewed Wales last weekend, and he sounded a bit like he knew what was coming. Wales: “The social network we’ll launch on Monday is just a project to build a search engine. We’re not at all pretending this is Google-quality yet, it’s far from it. This is just the beginning. We expect it will take at least two years before we have Google- and Yahoo quality.”
When that time comes, Wales expects people will switch to his engine: “It’s very easy for people to switch from one search engine to another. If we do a good job I’m not too worried that they will switch to ours.”
The positive attitude of Wales has been rewarded before, yet it’s still a huge challenge to compete with Google. Doesn’t it need some hash promotion techniques? When suggesting that Wikia Search could take advantage of the Wikipedia pages always showing up in the top results, Wales answers determined: “No no, Wikipedia has absolutely nothing to do with Wikia Search”.
“I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
With that in mind, it sounds even harder to reach the audience. Wales however, doesn’t seem to worry about it: “I’ll use the same marketing plan as I had for Wikipedia: do a good job and people will find you.”
I must admit though, that the plans of Wales and his team sound revolutionary. For instance, by keeping the code of Wikia Search open source, they give other search services and organizations the opportunity to create the perfect search engine together. This sounds logical when you take in account that Wales thinks search won’t be competitive element anymore. Wales: “Good quality search is becoming a commodity item. The search quality of Google, Yahoo and Ask are actually very similar. So the idea that Google is some kind of technological powerhouse, is actually not longer true.”
Bringing the social aspect into search successfully is something we haven’t seen yet. Though the social network they have on-line now isn’t very spectacular, the promises for the future sound good. “One of the weaknesses of current search engines is that their algorithms take a long time picking up new good sites. If you look at the way Google ranks sites, it all depends on the number of important sites that link to you. In our project, it takes only one community member that finds a good new site and lets the community know. That will affect the ranking immediately.”
But what happens if a large company tells its 500 employees to give their corporate site a ‘thumbs up’ on the Wikia search engine? Isn’t that a big threat for the validity of the search results? Wales: “That remark is very similar to questions that people would have about users doing bad things on Wikipedia. It’s very difficult to fool a community. Ranking a search result is a public act, so people can see what you’re doing and will rank the contribution very low.”
“We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent”
Sounds like Wales is actually planning on competing with Google. “As with every open source project, we will have a high number of languages covered. We would be thrilled if we eventually have a market share of 5 percent.” Did he receive any reactions from Google HQ? Wales: “I see the Google guys socially from time to time and told them about the search plans. But they didn’t give a real reaction yet.”
Written on January 6, 2008 – 4:03 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Mahalo launched a new toolbar and introduced user created stubs yesterday. Users have always been able to post links to Mahalo. Now they can even build their pages themselves or collectively.
Users can create pages called “stubs” just like on Wikipedia. Mahalo didn’t bother to come up with a new name for their user generated pages which makes sense because most people understand “stubs”. Google came up with “Knol”, their own definition of a “stub”.
If you abuse Mahalo Stubs by spamming or inserting only your own links your account will be banned. Someone apparently will be checking all the Stubs. I wonder how spamproof & scalable this will be. As Mahalo grows it will become more and more interesting to start your own Mahalo ‘ShareTheLove’ linkfarm.
One interesting note: there is no word about these new features on the official Mahalo blog yet. Instead, the announcement was made on Calacanis’ personal blog and to his 5000+ Mahalo Twitter followers. It is sort of a open/closed beta launch I guess…
There is a large collection of Mahalo Stubs here:
http://www.mahalo.com/Category:User_Created_Stubs
One example:
http://www.mahalo.com/Apple_Rumors
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
