Wikis in Forbes Best of the Web

Nice article on wikis in Forbes Best of the Web, here's an excerpt on Socialtext:

One firm already focused on trying to apply wiki technology to the enterprise market is Palo Alto, Calif.-based SocialText, which offers a simple wiki interface that allows Web log-style posting, as well as integration with e-mail. Ross Mayfield, co-founder and CEO, says, "It's a platform for unstructured, ad hoc collaboration. If I want to form a group, I can give a group a workspace name, click a button, and then invite people in, using their e-mail addresses. Suddenly I have a group of people I'm collaborating with in a private password-protected Web site that's made up of wiki pages."

At Ziff-Davis, a group of 50 team members, who used to receive about 100 e-mails a day, were able to eliminate all of those e-mails by putting information on their SocialText wiki instead. According to Tom Jessiman, general manager of Ziff-Davis's 1up.com, it has resulted in soft-cost savings of perhaps $1 million because of the time that team members saved by getting the same information directly, bypassing email.

Mayfield says that SocialText, which charges $30 per user per month and offers volume discounts, currently has more than 50 customers, and has had two consecutive cash-flow positive quarters.

The article describes wikis as an evolution of blogging for the enterprise (Extreme Blogging, that is).  We, of course, see it as a complement.

I have a plaque on my office wall from the last time one of my companies was in Forbes Best of the Web.  The yellow cover is beginning to fade and the headline reads "An Economy on Steroids."   Ah, headlines.