Things have been kind of crazy in the dot-com world lately. Apparently, there have been mega offers for sites like Digg, Bebo, and YouTube. And, of course, MySpace snagged $900 million from Google.

But there also appears to be some inflation with domain name prices. John Gotts, a big-time domain name buyer, has committed $2.8 million for Wiki.com. Actually, wikis are pretty hot right now, especially with the success of Wikipedia, which I recently wrote about in Bloggingstocks.com.

Kind of crazy? Maybe not. Traffic is getting expensive. Portals like AOL.com and MSN know they can charge top dollar. The thing about a domain like wiki.com is that lots of people are likely to type it in. It can be a great advertising vehicle.

Part of Gotts' master plan is that there are tons of people that would love to have personal wikis. So, let's say I want my own. If the URL is Taulli.wiki.com, it's a lot easier for me to remember, right?

Actually, I did just that. And it took about 20 seconds to set up. Also, in the setup, they asked me for my zip code. That's pretty smart – given that the business model is based on advertising (in other words, there can be local ads).

The site uses a technology from MindTouch, which focuses on wikis for major corporations. Also, there are certainly lots of wiki systems on the market, such as Near-Time and Jot.

So, I interviewed brand expert Lynn Altman. She has a firm called Brandmaker Express and has a new book coming out, Brand It Yourself: The Fast, Focused Way to Marketplace Magic. According to her: "Frigidaire...Kleenex...and now the Wiki. Turning your product name into a generic descriptor (or vice versa) is one of the most coveted results a marketer could hope for. Thanks to improved browser technology and the likes of Google, the value of these descriptors intensifies. Today, we use the address bar as a navigation tool, knowing that the keywords we type in will lead us to what we seek. And unlike the bricks and mortar marketplace where consumers see brands next to one another on the shelves, the browser does the searching-and often the navigating-for you, and the higher up your homepage can come back on that list, the better. In this scenario, a generic website could become more valuable than a specific brand site. If a 'wiki' does indeed become a descriptor of this pumped up, next generation 'blog,' then to John Gotts' point he has made a very savvy business decision. Let's just hope that he gets his money's worth before something else becomes the new 'wiki'."

Last week, there was the second annual Wikimania conference and yes, the keynote was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia may not be as hip as YouTube or MySpace, it certainly sucks up a lot of Web traffic (about 4% of daily traffic on the Net).

Simply put, a wiki is a website that allows people to publish and comment on articles. Wikipedia has about 3.8 million articles in 100 languages.

True, quantity hasn't been a problem. Instead the concern is the quality of the content. And that was the theme of Wales' keynote. Although, the open-source approach of Wikipedia has been working quite well. A recent study in Nature found four errors in Wikipedia for every three in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

A big play for wikis may be the Corporate World. There are a variety of companies – such as Jot and Near-Time – that are building corporate wiki tools. For example, eBay uses Jot to allow its 200 million person community to write and edit articles on how to better use the auction site.

I interviewed Joe Kraus, the CEO of JotSpot. According to him: "The wiki metaphor is a really powerful one. It turns the web from a monologue into a dialogue. The problem is that wikis have been trapped in the land of the nerds. Our goal is to bring them to the mainstream by making wikis more user-friendly... we see rapid adoption of the JotSpot wiki by non-technical users who are using the wiki to collaborate on anything from movie production to planning class reunions and family vacations."

There's another interesting company called MyWikiBiz.com. Basically, it writes up Wikipedia entries to help get companies exposure. According to the company's founder, Gregory Kohs: "I just can't fathom how a company's marketing or communications manager can shut off the lights for the night, knowing that his or her organization is missing out on a daily Wikipedia market of 6 million people – each of them hungry for information."