Just when you thought there were too many lightweight wiki companies around, another one is emerging with momentum.
Pbwiki has raised $2 million more from Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm, as has been reported elsewhere.
Wikis are Web sites that let multiple people edit their pages, the most famous one being Wikipedia. They’re good for people working in small groups on projects. Why would Mohr Davidow invest in this, when you’ve already got a raft of early players, from Socialtext, to Jot (now owned by Google, and closed to new users for now), WetPaint (which just raised 9.5 million last month from competing firm Accel Partners) and Wikispaces, not to mention the fast-growing Wikia (which is, however, slightly different, in that its wikis are structured according to thematic area, much like magazines on a rack, as opposed to individuals pursuing their own projects)? None of them are exactly rollingin the dough.
VentureBeat talked with seed investor Chris Yeh (who invested again in this latest around, along with seed investor Ron Conway), and Mohr Davidow’s David Feinleib. Yeh said Pbwiki has doubled its wiki growth over the past six months, which he believes is faster than chief independent competitors Wetpaint or Wikispaces (Socialtext has focused on corporate customers of late). Pbwiki now says it has more than 200,000 wikis, up from 130,000 in November, when we first reported on the company.
Feinleib said he was impressed with founder David Weekly’s reputation, and ability to get such traction with just $350,000 of seed funding. As for kicking the tires on whether Pbwikis’ numerous wikis were being created by real people, as opposed to spammers/squatters, Feinleib said he typed “Pbwiki” into some search engines and found enough convincing action. Notably, Feinleib said Mohr Davidow is “looking more aggressively at deals like this,” after not having made many new consumer Internet investments recently. However, he said he’s looking for evidence a company can make money, and noted Pbwiki’s premium accounts, which can be bought for between $10 and $35 month for extra features. It is now about break-even. We too opened an account at Pbwiki, and it has an easy feel to it. Like most wikis, you do have to go through the adjustment of figuring out how to create and organize new pages. It has many of the typical Web 2.0 features integrated; you can upload videos and other files into your wiki.
8 Comments
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Peter Kazanjy said:
Actually, PBwiki just released some really awesome point-n-click editing features. The big barrier to adoption on wikis for the masses has always been the wiki markup. This can change that for PBwiki. Also, each wiki flavor has usually had its own variety of markup. Adding a graphical editor solves that lock-in issue.
Even though wiki markup is already a totally stripped down markup language, it was still substantially different enough from the Microsoft Word interface everyone’s been trained on to be easily adopted. There was a pronounced learning curve for my parents when I set up a PBwiki a year ago to help us manage our family’s vacation house.
With the release of the point-n-click editor, I could see this really taking off for them. So much easier for collaboration than the typical “reply-all” email threads that just get hideous.
Also, I would disagree about PBwiki being a “new” mover. PBwiki’s been around for a long time, and just had much more underground buzz. For example, all of the BarCamp wikis are all built on PBwiki. Why? Cuz they’re free, and totally easy to start up. That, and David Weekly does indeed have strong cred amongst the early adopter crowd, it’s true.
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Jeff N said:
$2 MM more? It’s a reasonable choice as far as wikis go… but doesn’t really add significant value as a solution over anyone else. I’m not sure that another $2MM for marketing towards tech folks is going to make this shine any more.
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Ray Burt said:
When I created my wiki, I looked at all of them. PBWiki was clearly the easiest of the bunch. I have recommended it to friends who are very appreciative. I hope it grows and adds even more and better features. Note: I have no connection with the company…just a user who appreciates the product.
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P-Air said:
I hope for their sake that they put the money to crushing bugs. Their so-called new point-n-click interface is extremely buggy. After spending two days using it building up a wiki for free before deciding whether it was worth going for the premium service, it’s safe to say, that fm what I’ve seen so far, there’ll be no pbwiki account in my future. Very disappointing after showing so much promise.
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Brian Klug said:
Hi P-AIR. Improving the Point-n-Click interface is a priority for us. I’m personally dedicated full-time to fixing Point-n-Click editor bugs.
We’ve heard a lot of great feedback about how the new editor has already enabled a number of new adopters for our service. Peter’s observations are correct so far - the new editor really does break down that final barrier for novice users.
Bragging aside, I assure you we will continue to improve the new editor. Every 7-10 days we silently upgrade the editor with a fair amount of bug fixes and other improvements. I’m biased, of course, but I think it will be exciting to watch our progress!
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å‘电机 said:
I’m perplexed at Kathy being a target when on the list of top people to go after, I doubt she’d be in the first 50 pages (not discrediting her work, she’s brilliant, and gentle, but not the first I’d think would have to deal with this
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yotcisyero said:
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Japargurf said:
Just discovered a complete list of all marked down products at Amazon, sorted by category
and % off, ranging from 50% off to 90% off (thanks Sonja for the effort).Actually I never thought Amazon would have articles with 90% off, but only in the category
Electronics there are more than 3000 of them - look for yourself, the list is on
Bargain Hunter (which is a blog of a woman who specializes in finding good deals at
Amazon, like Britain’s “Jeanie”).
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