Zimbio inspired by Wikipedia

I like the idea and I like the two founders, at least in the video introduction. But there are many companies trying to apply the Wikipedia model across the long tail of topics, Wikipedia notwithstanding. Moreover, Wikipedia founder and wiki-evangelist Jimmy Wales is trying to apply the Wikipedia model across topics through his new venture called Wikia. Read my Net Sense column on MarketWatch for my take. Google is also trying to dig into topics with the help of the audience through its Co-op service. And, others -- including search startups - are trying to help people put together the ultimate reference page for any topic with the contribution of everyone on the Web. I call these topical pages - online brochures. Don't get me wrong. Brochures are valuable. I pick them up, or some sort of flyer, all the time when I travel to various places. It's just unclear which of these sites will attract the 1% of active creators to help build out these online brochures. As I said in one of my columns, regarding Plum (read Bambi.blogs.com for that column), most people grow tired of creating, or they'll need far more incentive to create. They'll start projects without finishing, resulting in half-baked Web pages and would-be news sites that ultimately are nothing more than one-off snapshots in time. Like the many cardboard folders I've created and then shoved in my desk or into storage boxes. At some point, they lose their value, and we end up with a bunch of useless Web pages or dead blogs just taking up space and clogging up searches. But, hey, each is an individual user's media portal, and users can do -- or fail utterly to do -- whatever they want. Now, I tested out Zimbio. I added my blog as a resource in its "Tour de France" page. It was pretty simple to add. In fact, the site works pretty smoothly. But many sites do. As I've written in the past regarding news sites that require audience participation, it's not the features of the site but the people in the joint that matter. Interestingly enough, when I signed up to Zimbio, I received my personal dashboard page where I can organize my collections. I'm seeing a lot of these personal dashboards these days. What that says to me is that there will be a lot of personal dashboards sprinkled across the Web with very little activity on them. In like vein, there will be a lot of half-baked topical pages created by many people across a number of services that want to wiki-rize (made-up word) the Web.

Comments

[Tony]

Bambi - thanks for giving Zimbio a test drive! We'll keep you updated on our progress.

[Astobeoptiott]

I'm new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.