Whether it is called crowdsourcing or wikis or social networking, there is a wealth of collaborative experience and expertise available online to help improve decision making, increase profitability, drive product innovation and expand into new markets.

Authors Barry Libert and Jon Spector have collated the contributions of hundreds of collaborators into an easy-to-read, information-filled guide book, We Are Smarter Than Me, to help entrepreneurs as well as those in established businesses harness the collaborative possibilities on the Web. The guide book includes case studies from well-established firms in addition to highlighting newly emerging collaborative possibilities. The authors include many helpful "what to do" suggestions to allow mass collaborative efforts to work for all types of busines-related situations.

The authors provide numerous examples of how mass collaboration can help raise capital for start-ups, provide wide-ranging but low-cost expertise, solicit customer input on product design features prior to production, and form communities of customer support for products already purchased. Lots of graphics and bulleted sections make the guide quite user-friendly.

We Are Smarter is already at work on its second collaborative volume, this one dealing with mass collaborative efforts to increase and enhance marketing and sales efforts. Contributions are currently being solicited, so you can still be part of the WE.

As an avid user of Wikipedia, I've come to appreciate the unbiased and incredibly detailed information that appears there on just about any subject that can be imagined. From U.S. Civil War information to human genome research to bios on CEOs, it is all there for the reading, editing and edification of anyone with an internet connection.

Scratch that -- did I say "unbiased?" While the power of crowds is theoretically known to produce the most accurate and historically correct information (no agendas required), companies and individuals that want to tilt the balance show up and start modifying "facts" with a certain slant. Anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, and when the black trenchcoats change something to reflect some kind of favorable position, there is generally a "truthsayer" who will change it back. Consider it a game of truth-telling "cat and mouse" for the digital age.

Now, there are tools that allow the administrators of the website (and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales) to see who exactly is changing Wikipedia entries -- so that "false" edits can be tracked down to their source. Often, politicians and company execs are the ones trying to turn the tables on criticisms, but with such tracking information available from tools like WikiScanner now available, will Wikipedia be more of a trusted sources for information than it has been?

One would think that open editing accessibility would prompt massive misrepresentations, but this is not the case with Wikipedia. In fact, corporate leaders baring all and being naked is the only way many of them will survive. Twisting facts and editing entries to tilt viewpoints will ultimately lead to exposure. I won't touch political manipulation here, though that does happen. And yes, it's been exposed when it does.

Here some interesting tech news from the World Wide Web today:

• Wikia, the San Mateo start-up founded by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, is working on a search engine that will use the same strategy as Wikipedia's user-reliant encyclopedia. Wikia, which already has Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) as an investor, is expected to be launched in the 1st quarter of 2007. (VentureBeat.com)


• Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) could vault ahead of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) in 2007 to become the world's most visited Web site. Microsoft is No. 1 worldwide -- largely because of downloads of updates to its ubiquitous software -- and Yahoo! is the most visited Internet property in the U.S. But Google is growing fast and the recent acquisition of YouTube could speed up its rise. (USA Today)


• The market share of visits to Apple Computer Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Apple Store (store.apple.com) showed an increase of 110% when comparing Christmas Day 2006 to 2005. The Apple Store was the fourth most visited website in the Hitwise Retail Index on Christmas Day 2006. (GigaOm.com)

Yet again, today Google made another interesting move, buying a wiki company called JotSpot. Basically a wiki is an online tool that helps groups collaborate using user editable pages.

To get some perspective on the deal, I talked Mark Kurtz, who is the VP of Sales and Marketing at MindTouch.

First, what is the background of your company?

MindTouch is a leading provider of hosted, appliance-based and open source wiki solutions. Privately held, MindTouch is based in San Diego, California.

Why do you think Google bought JotSpot?

Wikis provide a quick way to drive user generated content. Online communities thrive around compelling and relevant content. By having wiki technology as part of the Google offering, imagine the amount of new users and new content that will be added. This is Google's business and they are extremely good at being a visionary in this space.

Content is currency. Google knows this better than any other company. The YouTube acquisition is a perfect example of driving eyeballs based on content they did not have to pay to develop. It is easy to see where Google is going to address the consumer market.

Although, how Google will monetize the existing wiki user base (non-ad revenue based) for businesses remains unclear.

What might this mean for wikis?

This provides very clear market validation for wiki technology. This really represents a very fundamental shift in how applications are built; not only on the technical side, but also on human-machine interaction dynamics. Online collaborative systems require either some pretty heavy policy-enforcement infrastructure or an application design paradigm that makes collective efforts open and safe. The latter is the wiki-way of doing things. Market leaders like Google see the incredible power that wikis bring to foster communities, global collaboration, and stickiness to web sites.

Also, is Google trying to go more into the corporate market?

This seems to go into the consumer/SMB play to go along with previous acquisitions. Most of the corporations MindTouch deals with are very hesitant to store data, calendars, and email on someone else's searchable infrastructure. Does it make sense for some companies? I guess it does. However, we're anticipating that a high percentage of corporations are going to want to keep their systems internal for quite some time.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

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'."