I was invited by Troy Angrignon to help him talk about weblogs and wikis to a local SFU MBA class last Thursday, February 3rd.

The goal of the meeting was to help the team understand wikis and weblogs, which they would then summarize and point out the most important aspect for businesses/corporations and report back to their larger group of classmates (I'm sure the team will correct me in the comments or on their blog if I missed anything).

It was a good experience for me — delicious catered food, great questions, and good interaction. I think we even potentially saw the birth of blog as network status/update tool for major-telco-I-won't-mention-here. I missed the part about how wikis were going to be covered as well, so wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, but am definitely familiar enough with the concepts to describe them.

Below you'll find summaries of information we discussed, as well as links to other external resources.

A lot of the concepts of a wider, more open marketplace based on communication, conversation, and collaboration was written about in 1999's Cluetrain Manifesto. Today's tools, such as blogs and wikis, are supporting many of the concepts described in that book.

Especially since Bryght has a tool which has blogging as part of its feature set (as opposed to "only" being a blogging tool), I tend to define a blog by its features and functionality. These generally include:

• Easy web publishing: unlike static individual HTML pages of the past, all blog tools allow for the easy creation, editing, and publishing of web content
• Content in reverse chronological order: the newest information is at the top
• Each piece of content has a unique URL: (also called a permalink) this means that every piece of content can be directly linked to, and directly quoted/discussed
• Interactive: comments, trackback, or some other form of interactivity is supported directly
• Syndicated content: a weblog outputs its content in a feed of one or more syndication formats, like RSS; this allows for notification of new content (e.g. subscribe to the feed instead of manually checking the page for changes) as well as aggregation (e.g. show content from other sites in multiple places, all linking back to the original)

There are all sorts of other features that a blog might contain (e.g. categories, archives, etc.), as well as some different formats (e.g. individual blog vs. group blog, personal blog vs. business blog), but these are the shared base features.

The three main benefits of using a blog in a business environment can be summarized as follows:

1. Search Engine Ranking: the inherent characteristics of blogs lead to "organic" search engine optimization, resulting in high rankings for topics that are covered
2. Promotion: whether it be an individual, company, product, service, or brand, blogging about it will help to promote it
3. Interaction: a blog facilitates easy interaction through comments and the interconnected nature of online conversations; this makes it a good tool to communicate with customers, connect with other people in your industry, and put a "human" face on a business

One of the main differences between a weblog and a wiki is that the smallest unit of content of a wiki is a page, whereas blogs have posts (and there are usually one or more summary pages with multiple posts per page). As well, a blog typically has a limited number of people that can post content, with comments being the most common form of interaction. A wiki is very much a group activity.

• Easy creation and interlinking of pages: a link to a new page can be created as simply as typing a word with MixedCase — a link/new page is created automatically; these links to "new" pages can also be left as placeholders for future fleshing out of content
• Simplified text formatting: use of simple text commands to format the submitted page as HTML (e.g. *'s used to denote list bullets)
• Collaborative editing: the most basic wikis allow anyone with access to the site to edit any piece of content
• Revisions: versions of content between edits is kept, so that older versions can easily be reverted to or looked back at to see changes over time
• Recent changes: because of the constant and collaborative editing nature of a wiki, a recent changes page hilights new/updated content so users can track changes (some wikis actually publish their recent changes page as an RSS feed as blogs do, although typically only the page title/link are listed as opposed to the content itself)

Again, these are some of the most basic characteristics of wikis, and many have more features. One I mentioned that is quite new is JotSpot, which allows for the integration of database-driven functionality and mini web applications. Troy is testing a commercial wiki from SocialText, which allows users to submit content via email, among other things (That is probably a very bad outline of both of those products' capabilities, so check out their web pages for more info).

The following aren't directly business benefits as I listed for blogs, but rather the distilled essence of what a wiki is/is used for. As I stated at the meeting, the group nature of wikis means that they are very useful for internal communications and knowledge gathering. Typical external uses by business would be as a knowledgebase or other support resource.

1. Group Collaboration: easily and quickly have a group of people add to a central store of information that grows organically over time
2. User Driven: the community of users around a wiki are what determines its usage and evolution
3. Constant Change: since typically anyone can edit anything, you find rapid change and a general trend to more complete/accurate information, with the revision feature allowing for rollbacks in case of accidental, malicious or incorrect edits

This is my first extensive write up on wikis, so please comment if you have more to add on the basics. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia project powered by wiki technology that is often pointed to as a poster child for the capabilities of wikis. Lee Lefever's Wikis described in plain english is another excellent article. I hadn't looked for free wikis online before, but a quick search pointed me to SeedWiki.

Before we met, I had sent out three links as background material. I must admit, I don't have a good selection of resources, so I used three sources that I knew of directly.

• Intro to Business Blogging: from a similar talk I gave to the Vancouver Ecademy group, focused more on small business than corporations; has pointers to lots of beginner resources and tools
• How blogs work in 7 Easy Pieces: Roland's excellent write up on the basics of how blogs work
• How to track news and information on the web today: another Roland summary, which shows off some of the various tools and techniques for keeping up to date using blogs and blogging tools

These other articles include links to many of the main blogging tools and online services, so follow those for more background basics and pointers. We briefly mentioned LinkedIn, an online "social networking" site that is meant to track business connections. I invite everyone from Team FLOW to connect with myself and Troy (and with each other, of course) to check out the system.

Lastly, I threw in a plug for Northern Voice, the blogging conference Bryght is helping organize here in Vancouver on February 19, 2005. The focus is on personal/individual uses of blogging rather than business, but it will provide a good overview of concepts, tools, and techniques.

Should businesses be looking at blogs and wikis as part of their strategic planning? Definitely. These are the first of "social tools" that are facilitating and changing the way that businesses do business, both internally and externally. They will mean different things to different companies, but shouldn't be ignored or dismissed out of hand. Just as understanding basic websites was important a decade ago, understanding Web 2.0 is important today.