I just finished reading a NYTimes article today about a wiki-powered shopping site, Shopwiki, brought to you by two guys from Doubleclick and Amazon. I think I see that bubble, people. ;)
I really doubt this will ever get off the ground. The whole wiki phenomena is very young, even Wikipedia, the granddaddy, is still growing into itself. The idea that people are going to write, write, write so these guys can make money is typical 1.0 thinking. There’s very little unique value to be had here.
Part of what characterizes the 2nd gen sites is the “lazyweb” effect, people writing up cool hacks, mashups and apps that make things easier and more fun. Shopwiki doesn’t do either of those things. It simply assumes that X spent marketing dollars = Y driven traffic = Z generated content. That’s usually a slippery slope calcuation, since there’s also N new apps competing for visitor attention, which increases X, which bankrupts company A.
You may feel like disputing that, but you’re gonna have a harder time dealing with problem #2: the product cycle. With a typical manufacturer product cycle of 12-18 months, probably less, Shopwiki will have to refresh ALL of its content on a regular basis in order to stay relevant. The site will only be as good as its last 12 months of contributions.
Amazon is apparently blind to this problem, since their database is overflowing with old products they don’t even carry. This is the most annoying aspect of Amazon, IMO, and it shows a willingness to put sellers (retail, auctions, etc.) ahead of the needs of shoppers.
Shopwiki is going to be mainly populated with stub entries that are never fully fleshed out before they’re abandoned, colored entries by manufacturers and retailers (SEO will drive this), and their editorial product guides, which they pay for and don’t scale. Even mature, there’s nothing here but some pageviews to put Adsense ads on.
I suspect the founders know this. I will bet their whole “consumer-friendly” business model falls off in tatters within six months, and the company reorgs as a SEO company.
My favorite quote in the article: “All of us have our own little thing we’re into,” he said. “Mine is Ping-Pong. I don’t need 1,000 people coming to the Ping-Pong area of the site to make it work. If there are three people in the country who read it and comment on it, we’re in good shape.”
Dude, if you were really “into” Ping-Pong, as you say, you’d call it table tennis.
