Read/WriteWeb blogger, Richard MacManus, reviewed eBay’s new wiki last week. It will almost certainly be the largest wiki platform for a commercial website.
Here’s a quote from MacManus’ article:
Sowhy did eBay choose to add a wiki? eBay has a buyer and sellercommunity of more than 193 million members – a huge community that isthriving with conversations and activity. Their message boards get over100,000 messages per week and eBay users are very knowledgeable ontheir topic niches. Having a Wiki on eBay will serve to refine andformalize the cream of the content in its user forums. It will alsohelp eBay in the search engine rankings, as its user-generated contentcoffers will increase significantly over time!
Read/WriteWeb: eBay Wiki – world’s largest commercial wiki launched
I would like to try a little experiement here, and pretend that it wasn’t eBay that just announced a new enterprise level wiki site, but a major textbook company. It might read like this:
Sowhy did a major textbook company choose to add a wiki? It has a buyer and readingcommunity of more than 193 million members – a huge community that isthriving with conversations and activity. Their message boards get over100,000 messages per week and the major textbook company’s users are very knowledgeable ontheir topic niches. Having a Wiki for the textbook teachers and students will serve to refine andformalize the cream of the content in its user forums. It will alsohelp the major textbook company in the search engine rankings, as its user-generated contentcoffers will increase significantly over time!
Does that blurb seem that much out of place for major education news outlets?
2¢ Worth!
technorati tags:ebay, eduwikis, textbooks
Blogged with Flock
I work with elementary teachers and had been thinking that any grade level of teachers could benefit from a wiki for their own personal professional development and collaboration (and their students could benefit from the collaborative work with each other). So, I would offer another experiment only I’ve changed it for my own context. Hmmm…this could be my case for making wikis available to all of the teachers in my district.
“So why did fifth grade teachers choose to create a wiki? It has the need for more collaboration within its community of 20 members in 5 different schools – a community that could be thriving with conversations and activity. Their message boards could get hundreds messages per week because the fifth grade teachers are very knowledgeable on their topic niches. Having a Wiki for the fifth grade teachers and students will serve to refine and formalize the cream of the content in their classrooms. It will also help the fifth grade teachers in their instruction, as its user-generated content coffers will increase significantly over time!”
This development is most encouraging because it sends a clear message that Web 2.0-ishness is here to stay, even though no doubt the exact form it takes will change over time.
So, how long before eBay or some other enlightened large corporation adopts My_Space or something like it to manage internal and external communications and relationships? It can only be a matter of time. And how stupid will some schools, districts and Local Authorities look then?