2007: Year of the Wiki OR Year of the Mashup?

Conference after conference, chat after chat, two topics seem to emerge in almost all of them. Those two topics are: mashups and wikis. And it's not just at conferences and in discussions, but it's also online. Yesterday I attended a session about mastering the mashup and the day before I listened to several CEOs discuss wiki products. I also met with WetPaint (interview posted tonight) who also make a wiki product.

While last year was all about the blog, in my opinion this year will be about the mashup and the wiki. So I see four options for an outcome:

• Wiki dominates
• Mashup dominates
• Both Wiki and Mashup dominate
• Neither dominates, its all about something else

Mashups

Why are mashups hot now? Mashups are like the frozen food aisle in the supermarket. You purchase a half-created meal, add fresh meat, some spices, your own sauce and you have a great meal. And mashups are the same thing. You take someone else's great product, slap your own "added-value" to it, and now you have created something even better than the original in many cases.

Seth from Meebo discussed that the companies who have been mashed from will want to see value this year, be it a subscription type fee or some ad revenue split. I agree with Seth and I think as more mashups become wildly popular, the mashed from companies will want more and more. It will be interesting to see how Google handles this with so many mashed up services generating from Google content and services.

I think we will see many productivity bashed mashups this year versus ones created for fun. While they most likely won't be called mashups, there will also be a trend for b2b mashups. I can see great value for intranets to use the mashup model with their suppliers and so forth.

Wikis

We know Wikis are hot. I know back in the day, a Wiki could have saved us from hundreds of hours of custom development for intranet content systems. Wiki products are the top talked about product category currently.

I think before Wikis can come out of the tech closet and really hit mainstream (like blogs are), we will need to see more user-friendly wiki products. Companies like Wetpaint are now creating more friendly wiki products. I think we can all admit that the MediaWiki software is not the easiest to use with all of its {}*&%$$ codes. WetPaint already has over 200,000+ sites created.

I would bet we will see other companies forming around the friendly-wiki. And while WetPaint is an ASP model, I am guessing the next big one will be a server install model which will work perfectly for an inhouse intranet.

Your Thoughts!

So which do you think will dominate? Will both dominate? Am I offbase and neither will and some other item will? Share your thoughts because I want to know!