On The Radar: Wiki - The Interactive Website

Although both are not exactly new, social software like blogs and wikis are turning people's heads all over the Internet and even in the mainstream media. Of the two, blogs are more known and have grabbed more attention on the news with politics and in magazines like Time. Blogs were covered in an earlier On The Radar column here.

What in the world is a wiki? Unlike "blog" which is short for weblog, the term "wiki" was created in 1995 by a programmer from Oregon named Ward Cunningham. He got the term from wiki wiki, which means "quick" in Hawaiian. According to Webopedia.com, a wiki is:

 "A collaborative Web site comprised of the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface, including the work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog, typically authored by an individual, does not allow visitors to change the original posted material, only add comments to the original content."

Basically, a wiki is a completely interactive website where visitors of a common interest can help shape a website together. This type of interactivity should find a great home in both business and education. With a wiki, students can work together on school assignments and companies can work on projects together as one. Wikis would also work well with online clubs, clans, or any closely knit community. For example, one wiki has built an entire encyclopedia at Wikipedia and it's still going strong. 

The possibilities are huge for wiki, but there is one obvious pitfall that cannot be ignored. Simply put, complete interactivity can be bad if just one jerk comes along and destroys every thing a group has worked on. Due to this, some wikis do not permit anonymous edits and are known as fishbowls. I also noticed that completely open wikis log your IP whenever you make an edit.  

So what does all this mean to domainers? It means that there is good news and bad news. The good news is that wiki domains are not nearly in demand as blog domains yet. However, the bad news is that wiki is not totally undiscovered either. There are still some nice word combos available but forget about buying "wiki" or wikis" in any halfway decent extension. Also, forget about registering the next BlogHosting.com because both WikiHosting.com and WikiHost.com are already taken. Although not completely accurate due to being a part of a few unrelated words, typing in "wiki" at Whois Source will yield over 1500 names that are or were taken while "blog" will yield at least 24,000 names. Like I said, that is not completely accurate but it gives you some idea of how popular blog domains are compared to wiki domains.