WetPaint

Wiki provider Wetpaint is announcing tonight that they have hit the one million mark. The one million number represents "created" wikis on the Wetpaint platform, not active customers. It also seems the company is now marketing their service as "social publishing" rather than wikis. I think wiki is well known in the tech market but social publishing might be more mainstream-friendly.

Wetpaint also released the following stats:

• 8 million pages of content in the network
• users from 177 countries have created wikis on the Wetpaint platform

They are also announcing the launch of the "Golden Paint Can Awards" which will give prizes to 70 Wetpaint sites in 15 categories. Winners will be selected by a celebrity panel of judges, stats and a public vote. I always like to see companies show off their customers, it helps with goodwill with the current customer base and also helps potential customers see what's possible with the application or service. Zlio does a good job of this - they feature one shop every day on their blog.

Wetpaint picked up $25 million in venture capital funding back in May and also released 10 tips on Web 2.0'ing your office.

Two big stories this evening coming out of Seattle, both with regards to Wiki social publishing provider Wetpaint. They have raised $25 million in Series C funding. This brings the total amount raised by Wetpaint to approximately $40 million. DAG Ventures co-led the round with another financial investor, and existing investors Accel Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Frazier Technology Ventures all participated. The company notes that they will use the additional funds to, "accelerate the adoption of its leading social publishing platform and execute on its vision of making every site on the Web socially published with users empowered to create, collect, and organize content together."

I spoke with Wetpaint CEO Ben Elowitz who shares some statistics about the current usage of Wetpaint. There are 925,000 sites in the Wetpaint network, mostly in the entertainment, music, tv, and gaming categories. They have "lots" of large corporate partners and over 2,000 new sites are created every day. Over 500,000,000 (1/2 billion) words are housed inside of the wikis on Wetpaint. Check out my interview with Elowitz from late 2007.

The other announcement is the launch of "Wetpaint Injected". This is the service that was tipped to Techcrunch under the name Project Balco last month. Initial launch partners are Flixster, IGN and NewWire.

Here's the easy description of Wetpaint Injected: it's a way to add a wiki to any site in minutes that allows your site visitors to add content to a site instantly. The content is search engine friendly (i.e. it's not a basic script code) and uses a full editor to make it very easy for users to add, edit and update content within the wiki area. continue reading »

We've covered wiki-creator Wetpaint several times before and today the have launched their Facebook application. Named Tag Team Graffiti, the idea is simple. You take a photo in Facebook and make it a masterpiece using tools like the Jackson Pollock brush, spray can, etc.

Once you've made your masterpiece, you save it and then your friends can "modify" it and so it becomes a tag team to create a super awesome masterpiece. Once you are satisfied with it, others can rate it and help you move up the leaderboard.

While you might be a winner in the ratings, the real winner here is Wetpaint. The application will draws huge pageviews with the rating system, you could spend hours just rating photos and each one is another view. And don't forget you need your friends to install the app to really make it fun and effective. There aren't any ads on the pages yet but you can bet your paint can that they will be there soon.

Here is a sample masterpiece:

The fine folks at Wetpaint have created a list of techniques to "Web 2.0" an office. Wetpaint makes Wiki tools so they probably share everything at their office. I have taken a stab below to give my commentary on each of their suggestions. Have a look at mine below, then review theirs. The only one I notice missing is a gaming network - shooting your fellow workers in Quake can help relieve stress.

Tip #1 - Disassemble the cubes

Sure, you don't need any privacy! Calling mom to check on when she's picking you up? You best head into the one conference room with walls and a door!

Wiki provider Wetpaint has announced a partnership with HP to bring two branded Wikis to their customers: a Home/Home Office option and a Small/Medium business option.

"We are dedicated to helping brands employ the social computing aspects of Wetpaint to directly collaborate and communicate with their customers," says Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. "We know that consumers are ready to participate actively with brands in an organic, unscripted fashion, so we are excited to work together with HP to continue to define a new set of standards for customer interaction and care."

This is an excellent social advertising option as it gets HP customers engaged with each other around a topic (printing projects) while keeping the HP brand relative to fostering the conversation. Brands are looking for ways to engage consumers and we will see more of these "communities" sprout up as social media becomes more mainstream.

Here are my suggestions from a marketing standpoint. First, the HP logo should replace the Wetpaint logo in the top left position. This campaign is about HP first, Wetpaint second. Next, does this really need to be called a "Wiki"? For the casual HP customer, I doubt they understand (nor care) what the term means. Why not just allow people to edit without classifying the site?

Wetpaint will announce tomorrow morning the launch of their Facebook app which is a Wiki creator tool. called "Wiki Whiteboard". It's basically as simple to use as the main Wetpaint site. You can install the app now by going to the Wiki Whiteboard app page.

This could be a hot app (if they can overcome my frustrations below) as it's using Facebook friends as the authentication instead of having to create yet another group of friends. And it could be a great addition for groups who already are part of Facebook. What I don't know is if you can add a Wiki on top of an already created Facebook group or if you have to exit the group to enter the Wiki.

After you create the desired Wiki name, you are presented with a site wizard that can prefill pages in the following categories:

• Class Notes
• Party Planner
• Spring Break Planner
• Dorm Hall Wiki
• Video Collection
• Group Project
• Fraternity and Sorority

From tomorrow's release, “Close to 40 million people have turned to Facebook to connect with others, whether to keep in touch with friends, upload photos, and share videos or just to learn more abut the people they’ve met,” said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. “With Wiki Whiteboard by Wetpaint, Facebook users now can connect in deeper ways through collaborative content creation around favorite topics or events without leaving Facebook and without needing to be an expert in wiki syntax or HTML.”

The newly-created Wiki is jammed into a small space which also includes a Google ad for monetization making the space relatively small and vertical and horizontal scrollbars appeared for me. Also, the popup windows for editing also have to remain in the small width of Facebook's overall width.

This app moves the war between pbWiki and Wetpaint one notch further. Let's see what pbWiki counters with!

Come inside for a sample Wiki Whiteboard screenshot »

Wetpaint, a provider of hosted Wikis, today has launched a site templating feature to its feature lineup. It's basically a combo of themes plus default pages to make site creation easy for groups that normally may have a difficult time getting up and running online. This is another step in the battle of the hosted Wikis between PBwiki and Wetpaint. Wetpaint claims over 500,000 wikis created however no reported number on active wikis.

"In five years' time, every group initiative will have its own Website where members can share ideas, collaborate, and coordinate in ways that we're just starting to realize and appreciate today," said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. "Our mission is to be the Wiki platform of choice for these groups and to make it extremely easy for anyone to create a collaborative Website or a community around any purpose or passion."

From the release: Uniquely developed to help consumers immediately incorporate the best aspects of blogs, social networks, and message boards into their own personal Website or online community, the new site templates include options for parent-teacher groups, classrooms, team projects, weddings, book clubs, gaming clans, groups of friends, and sports teams. Included in these options are preformatted content pages, site navigation structures, Wiki tips, and other inspiring suggestions that new site creators can adopt or adapt as soon as they arrive at their newly created Wetpaint site.

What I like about Wetpaint is that its easy to get up-and-running and manage a Web site where you can distribute the editing rights across a group. Reminds me of the old days and Geocities, just 100x better. It's important that they continue to add new and interesting design templates otherwise the Wikis will get boring fast. Check out our other Wetpaint coverage along with my interview with CEO Ben Elowitz and Marketing Director Kevin Flaherty.

Wetpaint is announcing this morning that they will now offer private wikis for Wetpaint users. So if you want to protect your Wiki, you can do it now with Wetpaint.

“Fundamentally, Wikis are about openness, dialogue, and interaction. However, there are any number of situations where those things need to happen privately,” said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. “Now anyone can build a private Wetpaint Wiki Website as an online meeting place for their closest family, friends, and associates while also enjoying the benefits of the extended public Wetpaint community.”

Wetpaint is also launching a new search feature which uses YouTube for video search and Yahoo for image search to help you find the content you are looking for.

Check our previous Wetpaint coverage »

The battle of the Wiki heavyweights continues between Wetpaint and PBwiki. Today PBwiki notes on their blog that several new features have been added to their already quite impressive lineup.

The features include:

• Spreadsheets
• Voice chat
• Event-planning
• Calendars
• Video upload

The hosted Wiki space is heating up. The days of Mediawiki and it's hard to use WikiTML are over for the average user. Last week Wetpaint launched WikiPaint (officially named Wetpaint Please Touch) and now PBwiki adds more business and organizational tools. I called 2007 the "year of the wiki" and I continue to stand by that statement. Are there other players in this hosted Wiki space that I should be reporting on? Let me know in the comments.

And don't forget to check out the startup tips from PBwiki CEO, David Weekly.

Wetpaint, a Wiki provider has launched a new tool this morning. Named Wetpaint Please Touch, the tool is like a Wiki but for art. The idea is rather simple. You create a piece of art in a Microsoft Paint style. After you have finished your masterpiece, you can either send it off to the online gallery or send it to a friend who can continue your work. And it becomes a group art piece and everyone can update and so forth. It's a fun little app!

Check out my video review inside. One of the things I can see happening is someone uploads a picture of the side of a subway/tube car and then we can all paint graffiti on it like it was 1980!

If you create a piece of art using the tool, post a link in the comments so we can view your masterpiece and then edit it away!