Wiki Fever
April 25th, 2006 | Published in Out Loud | 4 Comments
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.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:01 pm (#)
Haha- did you actually read the article? You obviously have no idea about this website. Why don’t you learn a little bit more before you write something like this?
April 25th, 2006 at 3:23 pm (#)
I love many products of the “lazyweb,” but it’s all very, very niche. Where do you go when you want a complete, reliable resource? The big boys, like Amazon and Shopwiki. I doubt the Shopwiki community, or its editors, are going to allow spamming or marketers—or at least I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. My optimism stems from Wikipedia, which, despite what you say, is a well-developed community that keeps things (at least on the articles I read) relatively fresh and clean, and it has one million articles. How hard will it be to manage some 5,000 shopping guides?
Also, Shopwiki and Amazon’s ProductWiki are two (very) different products.
April 26th, 2006 at 11:32 pm (#)
yeah, mark, i read the article (duh). i believe my comments still stand, do you have a specific criticism you’d like to share? or just sniping?
i agree with kamikaze that wikipedia is big, but it’s still very young and hasn’t reached its full potential—on many topics, wikipedia is weak, but it will get better because the majority of its topics will stay relevant over the years. i like wikipedia, myself.
but shopwiki’s topics are products and they don’t last. nobody cares about what was written about a 2-year old product. if you can’t buy it, you don’t need to read about it.
and if you have to make the product generic and not cover specific model years, then you’ve eliminated the real value. products do change year to year. if you can’t address that, then it’s not that useful a service.
there are product guides everywhere, and there are hardcore reviews everywhere. what’s shopwiki bringing to the table?
i’m sorry if i seem too cynical, but i’ve been around the block a few times, and this one smells fishy to me.
May 8th, 2006 at 12:46 pm (#)
I see the point about keeping it updated. This is a problem of consumer guides in print form, too. A lot of Consumer Reports’ top-rated products are no longer available by the time they’ve tested them and published the results. I’ve written some reports for ConsumerSearch, a site that bases its product recommendations on an intensive review of both professional and user reviews. I can tell you that one of the most laborious parts of writing the report is checking for new models, then figuring out which ones correspond to the ones recommended in the reviews. Often I end up phoning the main manufacturers, talking with tech support, and calling local dealers to really understand the product and the current models. Without this kind of labor-intensive work, product recommendations end up being very frustrating. ConsumerSearch isn’t perfect either—it’s tough to keep all the reports updated, but at least they have a system for making the effort.