New Media Life Cycle Analysis™

September 9, 2009
Analysts: Andrew M. Davis, Brad Schwarzenbach

The Wiki
Looking at Wikipedia and beyond this Tippingpoint Labs New Media Life Cycle
Analysis considers the future of the crowd-sourced platforms, potential monetiza-
tion strategies, and offers key recommendations for enterprise application and
implementation.

Inside This Report Table of Contents

Each week, the analysts at Tippingpoint
Labs release a New Media Life Cycle™
1. Channel Overview
report designed to help marketing 2. Resource Analysis
professionals understand the new media
landscape. 3. Forecast Analysis
These reports use empirical data and a 4. Key Forces
sound methodology to help ad agencies,
PR firms, marketing consultants,
5. Content Potential
interactive agencies and chief marketing 6. Medium Overview
officers make educated and informed new
media decisions. 7. Phase Analysis
Each report looks at the quality of the
8. Recommendations
content on a channel, the state of the 9. Appendix
medium, an analysis of the life cycle and
the audiences participating on the
platform, the key forces shaping the
channel, a forecast for the channel’s future
and sound content recommendations for
participating by adding value. ■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009
Analysts: Andrew M. Davis, Brad Schwarzenbach

Channel Overview

Wikipedia Popularizes a Platform & Concept

According to the New York Times, Wikipedia is one of the top five
most visited websites in the world. With more than 330 million readers Powering the Wiki
and three million English articles it is certainly one of the deepest
resources on the Internet. Phenomenon
If you’re unfamiliar with Wikipedia, it is a free, web-based collaborative
encyclopedia. Basically, users (volunteers) from around the world add
and edit content on any topic and, as a group, validate or delete content
deemed irrelevant, inaccurate or
incorrectly sourced.

Wikipedia launched in 2001 and is

the brainchild of Jimmy Wales and
Larry Sanger. Today, Wikipedia is
the “largest and most popular
general reference work on the
internet.” (Wikipedia entry for
Wikipedia.)
Wikipedia, however, was not the
first wiki ever created.
WikiWikiWeb was created by Ward Cunningham in 1994 as a way to
quickly edit or comment on another’s content on the Internet.
MediaWiki is a free and open
source software solution
originally designed to power
Wikipedia.
MediaWiki can be deployed
on a server allowing any
organization to begin
generating crowd-sourced
content.

It wasn’t until Wikipedia’s launch that wikis began their slow and Since its introduction,
steady rise to mainstream adoption. MediaWiki has been installed
on websites around the world.
The success of Wikipedia (or any wiki for that matter) is directly tied
to the passion and activity of a small subset of users who actually MediaWiki isn’t the only free
contribute and edit content. Even Wikipedia with only 500,000 wiki software solution. There
contributors demonstrates that in even the most popular wiki in the are literally hundreds of
world, less than .10% of all users actively participate. ■ different wiki platforms
available today.■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™
Resource Analysis
Wikipedia Proves Valuable Despite Concerns
Wikipedia has risen to prominence as the definitive
resource of general knowledge on the internet de-
spite persistent skepticism in the scholastic commu-
nity regarding its accuracy and community-driven
content development model. The wiki model of col-
laboration easily enables community participation
but this also leaves a channel open to manipulation
and misuse. And, as Wikipedia has seen, it falls short
of being regarded as a valid scholarly research tool as
many articles don't meet the rigorous fact-checking
standards of established research tools such as Ency-
clopedia Britannica.
If you can't beat 'em...
Britannica enjoys the esteem and regard of the intel-
lectual community as a reviewed and acceptable re-
search tool and makes portions of its content avail-
able online. However, the Britannica channel only
makes all of its content available under a subscription
model. Further, it's littered with text and graphical
ads. In fact, in response to the Wikipedia hegemony
as the Internet's reference guide, in June 2008 Bri-
tannica announced that it would open the content on
Britannica.com to community edits, just like
Wikipedia. Their copycat efforts have been for
naught though as Wikipedia's traffic was roughly 43
times greater in July 2009.
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August 12, 2009
Community-driven content can work
Wikis have established themselves as a great model
for the aggregation of general knowledge, Wikipedia
being the best example. The LyricWiki is another
example of a community-generated repository of in-
formation, this time for song lyrics. The inherent
value in the model is that it enables engaged users to
create a resource that, historically, one would have to
pay for. Instead now, using crowd-sourced data, it can
be created and distributed for free. Accuracy, which
historically hasn't been viewed by the communities
as a huge issue, will become one if a wiki is to be con-
sidered as a truly scholarly resource.
Participating On Wikipedia
If you plan on participating on Wikipedia, you must
learn their process for validating, editing, sourcing
and deleting content. In addition, you must get ac-
quainted with their wiki markup language. This is no
easy task.
We recommend you choose an area in which you can
add value on Wikipedia - somewhere where you
would be considered an expert. Start by editing or
updating or even challenging an article’s content. If
you plan on creating a new page (or topic) start by
copying an existing topic page similar in format to
the one you plan on creating.
Launch the topic and make sure you stay on top of
any challenges or deletion requests defending your
topic. This is very difficult and time consuming
(which is one of the reasons participation rates on
Wikipedia are so low). ■
New Media Life Cycle Analysis™
August 12, 2009

Forecast Analysis

Wiki Functionality Emerges in Other

Easier-to-use Platforms
Wikis as a Platform many of the features and functions found in a func-
tional wiki. With much more accessible interfaces
The Benefits and functions we will see more successful platforms
Moving forward, the wiki model of collaboration will integrating and offering wiki functionality.
become beneficial and valuable for large organiza- Wikipedia
tions to deploy both internally and customer-facing.
The future of Wikipedia needs to be a product of its
They represent a scalable solution for the aggrega- goal. Here are two potential future paths:
tion of valued corporate information that is easily
edited, updated, and maintained by a multitude of 1. Become an authoritative scholarly resource
users. They can encourage inter-departmental com- 2.Remain focused on building article volume
munication and cooperation by providing transpar-
The quality versus quantity argument. Or, as defined
ency into roles and processes.
by The Economist in March 2008, Wikipedia Dele-
The Issues tionists versus Inclusionists. The pros and cons of
However, wikis as they exist today, are a poor solu- each are obvious and conflicting.
tion for these needs. Wiki solutions in the future will The former flies in the face of the Wikipedia's claim
need to be streamlined, with more accessible user that it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" and will
interfaces designed for all levels of technological ex- shift focus away from knowledge aggregation and
pertise. They will need to be developed with enter- onto validating all edits made. This will also effec-
prise application in mind. tively limit the growth of new articles.
The Outlook As for the latter, quality issues will continue as re-
sources have to remain focused on scalability issues
and community monitoring. While this will effec-
tively result in a lower quality of content, it will con-
tinue the growth of the channel in terms of volume
and breadth of knowledge.
However, ultimately, considering the existing size of
the channel and the VERY small percentage of peo-
ple who actually contribute content, coupled with a
slowing of volume growth in the major Wikipedia
channels (English & German), expect the Deletionist
viewpoint to win out. The decision to follow this
model will allow Wikipedia to move into the Con-
solidation phase of its life cycle and allow it to build
the overall quality of their existing content.

A wiki theme and plug-ins developed to turn Word-
press into a fu"y functional wiki.
Microsoft’s SharePoint and even the open source
blogging platform, WordPress, have implemented
Furthermore, Wikipedia must settle on a sustainable
revenue model. Without this, its longevity as a
worldwide resource is uncertain. ■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

High

Wikipedia
Usability Concerns

Free Open
(User Engagement)

Source Wiki
Platforms

Hosted Wiki
Solutions
Wiki
functionality
ported to new
Platforms

Low
Low Platform Growth High
(Momentum)

Key Forces
User Engagement & Momentum Focus on Usability
The Four Key Forces sure has created a set of connotations for any wiki pro-
vider that must focus on redefining the platform as
There are four main key forces that act on any new
easy-to-use, in the form of easily-managed informa-
channel as it moves through its phases in the New
tion, agile content organization, and low-barrier tools
Media Life Cycle™. These forces are expressed as Ex-
to allow users to more frequently contribute.
posure, Momentum, User Pressure and Competitive
Threats. Momentum
User Pressure Wikis are stuck in the monetization phase, where
companies like DekiWiki, who offer an open source
In terms of usability, wikis as a category have largely
solution are hoping to capitalize by selling service and
fallen flat. Wikis are constantly thought of as ‘geek-
support agreements for their software. Hosted solu-
centric’ tools, requiring ‘coding knowledge’ and an un-
tions, like Zoho’s wiki are charging users for access to
derstanding of backend functionality. For Wikipedia
the tools. Wikipedia, is working to drive donations to
and wikis in general to see growth and wider adoption,
support its growth. Until corporations see the value in
new users will need to see usable features and func-
using a wiki, momentum for deploying wiki solutions
tions emerge that allow for higher participation rates.
will remain slow.
Exposure
Competitive Threats
Wikipedia, almost single-handedly helped drive the
There is a lot of competition in the wiki market.
notion that user-generated content can be valuable,
Without a clear monetization model and corporate use
credible and crowd-sourced effectively. In addition, the
case, competitors will continually emerge, offering
exposure Wikipedia garnered in the early phases of its
slight variations on the basic notion of a wiki
evolution helped define the wiki platform. This expo-
platform.■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

This Wikipedia editing interface is indicative of how inaccessible wiki functionality is to a new user.

Content Potential
Wiki Content Organization & Creation Tools Stifle
Deployment & Management
The creation of frequent, high-quality, relevant con-
tent on any wiki is crucial to its long term growth
and sustainability.
The 1% Rule
Remember, no matter how successful a wiki is, only
1% of the entire audience for your content will par-
ticipate in the generation or validation of the con-
tent you create. This means that the user experience
must be accessible and easy.
Too Many Pages No Structure
Creating aesthetically pleasing, well-formatted,
organized content is also part of a user’s experience
in generating or consuming content on a wiki.
Wikipedia, with its intense focus on using search as
the starting point for navigation is the most success- Even DekiWiki, one of the more user-#iendly wiki so-
ful wiki organization model. Other platforms at- lutions on the market is difficult to navigate and organ-
tempt to provide users with a navigation menu that ize content.
can result in hundreds of disorganized pages, unless
well-managed by content editors. ■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

Life Cycle Analysis: Wiki (Search share)

Wiki Wikipedia Source: Google Insights
100

75

Gestate
Experiment

50

Monetize
Adopt

Escalate
25

0
28- -04
20 r-04
12- -04

6-N -05
29- -05

2-N -08
25- -08
5-D -04
27- -04

Ma 5
14- y-05

23- -06
16- -06
8-O 06
31- -06
25- -06
17- -07
9-S -07
2-D -07
24- -07

Ma 8
10- y-08

19- -09
12- -09
-09
b-0

b-0
-

r
ov

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Jun
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Jan

Jul

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Sep

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The life cycle analysis above showcases the slow adoption of the wiki as a platform. While Wikipedia helped users
around the world understand the value of crowd sourcing the creation of content, the deployment of wiki solutions
has slowly progressed through a prolonged escalation phase.

Medium Overview

Wikis in Monetization Phase: Struggle With Wider

Deployment Issues
It is very common to see the deployment and wide Even open source platforms like WordPress have
acceptance of a specific channel like Wikipedia far been customized by users to mirror some of the
outpace the adoption for a new platform like wikis. main features usually reserved for wikis.
However, the growth and long term sustainability of
a channel like Wikipedia is closely tied to the wide Wikipedia, running a wiki platform called Me-
adoption and acceptance of the platform (wikis.) diaWiki requires users to understand, learn and use a
wiki mark-up language very similar to HTML. This
As wikis enter the monetization phase they are faced barrier to entry has kept their contributor user base
with the fact that Wikipedia has never successfully low. Although MediaWiki has included a rudimen-
monetized their channel. In 2006 articles began ap- tary WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) edi-
pearing online questioning Wikipedia’s ability to tor, the process of editing a wiki entry has largely
monetize. Everything from micro payments to dona- been reserved for those willing to devote a large
tions and even advertising were floated as potential amount of time and energy to learning the tools and
revenue streams. processes involved.

While corporations have been slow to adopt wikis as
a collaborative way to capture and organize informa-
tion, the proliferation of new wiki platforms has
grown exponentially. (See WikiMatrix.org for an ex-
haustive list and comparison tool.)
Channels like Zoho have released wiki functionality
as part of a large suite of ‘enterprise-ready’ tools and
are asking users to pay a monthly fee for access.
Other open source platforms like DekiWiki are sell-
ing support and enterprise-level services attached to
their open source platform.■

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

Life Cycle Analysis: Wikipedia (Search share)

Wikipedia Source: Google Insights
100

Gestate
Experiment

75

Monetize
Adopt

Escalate
50

25

0
28- -04
20 r-04
12- -04
5-D -04
27- -04

Ma 5
14- y-05
6-N -05
29- -05
23- -06
16- -06
8-O 06
31- -06
25- -06
17- -07
9-S -07
2-D -07
24- -07

Ma 8
10- y-08
2-N -08
25- -08
19- -09
12- -09
-09
b-0

b-0
-

r
ov

ec
g

Jun
ep

ov
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Jan

Jul

Jan

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n
Sep

Ma
Ap

Ap
Ma

Au
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Since late 2006, Wikipedia has struggled with monetizing their platform in a sustainable way. In addition to their
monetization attempts, Wikipedia’s ability to increase the number of people participating by adding or editing content
has been severely limited.

Phase Analysis

Channel Momentum Slows; Wider Participation Required

Wikpedia’s life cycle analysis showcases some of the dition, the process for validating, referencing and
challenges facing the deployment of any wiki. As sourcing legitimate content is largely monitored by a
pointed out in a New York Times blog entry on small group of ‘super-users’ who control the deletion
August 29, 2009, (http://tr.im/NYTwiki) during the and detection of invalid content. This convoluted
escalation phase of the channel, a tremendous process has discouraged a large portion of new users
amount of new content was added by about 300,000 from participating on the channel.
users.
Wikipedia is largely maintained by a population of
By 2009, the creation of new content has slowed and male contributors. Look for a new generation of
the number of authors participating has only grown younger female participants to help shape the con-
to 500,000. As their momentum has slowed, so has tent creation and validation process.■
their ability to maintain and human edit the content
created for the channel.
The main issue, in our opinion, is that the tools (wiki
markup and rudimentary WYSIWYG editor) used
to create, edit and maintain content are inaccessible
to the vast majority of the potential user base. In ad-

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

Recommendations

Wikis as a Collaboration Knowledge Base

Wikis are a valuable tool. The concept of using a will prove to be far more valuable to a broad
community to crowd-source the creation of user base.
valuable, high-quality content has been proven
Venture Capitalists & Investors
on platforms like Wikipedia.
We believe there is a tremendous opportunity to
That being said, wikis have a long way to go as a
invest in the creation and release of a search-
platform. Here are three keys to creating, man-
based wiki platform for corporate and/or cus-
aging and sustaining a valuable wiki.
tomer knowledge creation and sharing. How-
Large Participation Rates ever, investors should look for existing platforms
on which wiki functionality can be added or in-
In order for a wiki to be successful and sustain-
cluded. Even re-packaging an existing content
able you must make sure that the edit features
management system as a secure wiki solution
and functions are accessible and easy to use.
should be considered.
Your user base must feel the barrier to adding or
editing content is low. Without an easy-to-use Technology Entrepreneurs
interface, your wiki will not succeed.
Native WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
Organizationally Challenged get) editing and adding functionality will be core
to the successful creation and deployment of
Wikis are inherently organizational nightmares.
any new wiki platform. Removing the urge to
In order to create an easy-to-navigate wiki you
create a central navigation and organization
must focus on using search as the central form
schema will make any new wiki platform more
of navigation. The amorphous nature of the
successful. However, automatic interlinking of
content makes any other form of navigation use-
articles and dynamically generated tables of con-
less or, at least, prohibitively difficult.
tent will be sufficient for even the largest scale
Evolution Curve deployments.
In the early stages a new wiki undergoes a huge Content Creators
transformation while the initial set of baseline
Wikis are a valuable asset for the capturing of
content is created. After this, content genera-
high-quality domain knowledge. Getting famil-
tion is slow, unless it is made an integral part of
iar with the adding and editing functionality on
the corporate or user culture. Be weary of the
a wide-variety of wiki platfroms is recom-
initial success of any new wiki. Wikis are famous
mended. In addition, participating as a content
for becoming relics on your server.
expert on Wikipedia is a great way to increase
Recommendations By Role your value within the wiki community. Partici-
pating on Wikipedia is not easy, but understand-
Marketing Executives ing their approval and deletion methods should
If you are considering the implementation of a be considered part of your content strategy. ■
wiki for internal or external use, we recommend
you steer clear of any wiki-specific platform (i.e.
MediaWiki). These platforms have proven to be
difficult to use, hard to adopt and even more
challenging to manage. Options like the Word-
press Wiki theme (and the additional plug-ins)

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New Media Life Cycle Analysis™ August 12, 2009

Glossary

Appendix
Terminology
Medium - A form of communication.
Example: Blo&ing or video on demand.
Platform - a framework for a medium’s
application.
Example: The iPhone is a platform for the mobile
application medium. Wordpress is a platform for blo&ing.
Channel - The service provider of a medium.
The New Media Life Cycle
The New Media Life Cycle™ is the brain child of
Tippingpoint Labs Chief Strategist, Andrew Davis.
It is a framework for analyzing new media with an
emphasis on quality of content, user adoption and
demographic migration. The New Media Life
Cycle™ Analysis is designed to put any given
subject (a channel, platform or medium) in context
with the larger new media landscape.

Example: Scribd is a channel for document sharing.
Blo&er.com is a channel for blo&ing.
Content - Medium expression.
Example: A blog post is content delivered through the
blo&ing medium.
Designed specifically for Chief Marketing Officers
and marketing executives, the life cycle analysis is
designed to help quickly and effectively understand
the new media landscape.

About Tippingpoint Labs

Tippingpoint Labs is an online content creation
agency with one focus: to create and distribute
high quality, frequently distributed, relevant
branded content for its clients.

The Tippingpoint editorial staff, multi-media

production team and the research analysts strive
to develop a deeper understanding of the entire
web universe, not just Facebook or Twitter.

Tippingpoint has helped clients like Breville,

TomTom and Putnam Investments increase sales
and reduce costs by creating content that resonates
with their clients’ audience.

We believe in the transformative power of a new

media strategy built around valuable content
designed to reach a specific audience. Do you feel
the same way?

Contact Scott Loring, our Managing Director, at

617.332.8261.

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