Wiki That!

New Year Resolutions (mine)

Like everyone else, I wrestle with resolutions and whether or not to even make resolutions. It's a good way to set some goals though, so here are a few that I hope to deliver in 2006...

• Get my arms around tagging - 'Connection' is the key and I need to master this RSS tagging thing. I'd like this blog to start showing up on Tecnorati, del.ico.us, and other blog tracking tools. I'm a procrastinator when it comes to administivia so I haven't really delved into it other than to find lots of advice that says I should do it. If you have a good resource that lays out the details of 'How', I (and maybe a lot of others) would like to hear from you.
• Get more Comments on my posts. Maybe it's me in that my posting doesn't inspire Commenting or maybe it's just the nature of people who surf from blog to blog, gleaning what they can, and moving on. I know there are blogs out there that inspire plenty of discussion, so I need to find the magic. Maybe some controversy...
• I will post more real world examples and scenarios. Supposedly, 2006 is the year of the wiki so there should be more material to post about, right? In an effort to deliver on this, I'll be creating another reference section - "Public Wikis 4U" - live wiki sites on different topics that you can both contribute to and get some more insights for your own 'Private' wikis.
• Help a couple civic/volunteer organizations get started.
• Get an ISP to sponsor this blog

Can ISPs Offer Wikis to Local Civic Groups?

The Goldsboro News-Argus (Wayne County, NC) has a familiar plea for people to offer their time and effort to a wide variety of community volunteer opportunities. It’s the type of article that reminds us, especially around the holidays, why each of our respective communities are special places to live.

I’ve devoted my time to any number of local volunteer efforts over the years. My interest in this particular piece however (similar to a post I ran a couple months ago) is in both how civic organizations can use wiki technology to further their missions AND how ISPs can facilitate that. Obviously, any group has the ability (and many do so already) to set up a private group wiki and engage their members very productively. This, however, is about an opportunity to leverage critical mass: 

• Every community in America has civic organizations like this along with the solicitations for participation.
• Every civic organization has a purpose, members, and myriad activities.
• And most organizations are enabled by people who are members of multiple civic groups. 

There is typically a local ISP that services the residents of most local or regional communities. Most people who are involved with these civic efforts have email accounts with that ISP and most of the target market of potential volunteers AND the intended recipients have email accounts with the ISP as well.

How effective might it be for that ISP to offer wiki capabilities so these myriad groups could easily set up ad-hoc groups and activities specific to each civic need? Many of the volunteers in these organizations actually participate in multiple organizations. Many ALSO participate in OTHER civic organizations like scouting, athletics, and church organizations. 

If YOU are an ISP, do you get the sense of synergy in all of this? Here are a couple implications for an ISP to consider:

• Non-ISP account members can be allowed to join these groups thus increasing the pool of candidates for ISP subscription (and their fees):
• You can attract a critical mass of participation that will get the attention of local marketers (and their advertising fees):
• As participation grows beyond the local geography through viral growth, national marketers take notice, and
• If you are an ISP that is bundled with other telecom services, you are attracting an audience that can be direct marketed for those additional bundled  services. 

This is a revenue model based on 4 distinct levels. Anybody interested?

Take it a step further - collaborative tools like wikis are being adopted by large enterprises, but how does a small enterprise do this? The same people who participate in local civic organizations also work in local companies that are looking for cost effective communication tools. 

Does there appear to be an element of leverage in all this? 

Note to ISPs - wake up. You are snoozing and soon to be losing. As I posted a few days ago, you are experiencing churn, you are cutting costs to the point of being mere ‘lights out’ operations, your margins are still eroding, and none of you appears to have anything differentiating to attract new subscriptions. 

The first couple ISPs to latch on to this model will put the rest of them out of business.

An opportunity for ISPs

I googled ‘ISP growth market’ and came up with 106 hits (Search News, not Search The Web). 106 hits? That is amazing. Very few of the news items were US-based (except for the press releases). Most were fluff pieces from the UK, South Africa, Canada, Australia, Ireland, etc.

The ISP market is experiencing saturation, commoditization, and consolidation. In other words, ISPs have nothing to offer other than price, speed, and security. They are being relegated to bundling access with other telecom services, cannibalizing their own subscription base, or poaching other service providers. Prices are dropping, costs are growing, and margins are eroding.

What’s a Service Provider to do? Given the scarcity of news (or even press releases) in this area, one has to conclude that they aren’t doing much of anything.

I can’t help but wonder at the disparity between all the hype with Web 2.0 and the seeming disconnect with ISPs who were the primary reason the Internet was born in the first place. How is Web 2.0 being facilitated and leveraged by ISPs? The only leveraging seems to be by the Web 2.0 providers leveraging ISP subscribers who use their ISP to access all the cool Web 2.0 tools.

I also googled ‘ISP wiki’. That produced 3 hits. Am I missing something here? Is an ISP not the most natural platform for wiki capabilities you can imagine?

I’ve had a business model in mind for some time now as to how an ISP could offer wiki capabilities to not only their subscription base but to non-subscribers as well. It would be free, it will drive subscription growth, and it can make a ton of money.

If you are aware of an ISP offering wiki capabilities, please let me know. Again, I’m interested in wiki functionality that allows private groups to form and conduct their business. I’m NOT interested in the big, Wikipedia style of wiki.

If you have a stake in an ISP with at least 100,000 subscribers and need to find a differentiating service offering that will multiply your subscription base, I’d like to talk to you. Email me and we can chat.