Blogs versus Wikis
As I have written in the past, wikis are collaborative tools that essentially allow any web page of a site to be easily edited without a user having any knowledge of HTML.
Blogs and wikis are two specific types of content management systems (CMS). As such, one of their key goals is to provide a venue to quickly publish and edit content for the web. While these two buzz words share other commonalties, there are also a number of very important distinctions between the two. I’ve created a visual to quickly summarize some of the differences.
I encourage you to compare the MSNBC blogs to Wikipedia to see these technologies in action. Please note that what I provide above is simply a framework to think about how blogs and wikis are used - there may be contradictions.
Any questions or thoughts are most welcome.
October 7, 2005 at 9:10 am
Ken, I see your point about blogs begin 1:M and wikis being M:M. But, for a small business owner who is concerned about controlling content - doesn’t the blog offer some control advantages? I mean, if we (I am a small business owner) are using blogs & wikis to extend our knowledge reach and expand our audience…shouldn’t we choose a technology that allows us to control postings?
From looking at the wikipedia site (my second time…first I thought it was nothing more than a dictionary) it looks like you would have to spend alot of time moderating comments posted in the forum.
Am I getting it? I am new to this, but very interested in using blogs / wikis for my own capitalistic means.
October 7, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Brad…thanks for your thoughts.
The control question is a good one. One of things about both blogs and wikis, is that they challenge us to release a certain amount of control. We actually have to *trust* our users or be ready to engage them, whether it be in responding to praise or criticism.
That being said, for the most part, I see wikis as being used as an internal project tool - a place where you and your employees / peers store your best practices, collaborate on a document together, etc. There are some examples where having a public facing wiki makes sense (e.g., Wikipedia) but for the most part, I’d say they are tools for within the “corporate walls”.
Blogs do allow you to direct the conversation and if you are looking for something to attract users to your consulting services, I’d say this should be the approach you take.
Hope that was helpful.
February 16, 2006 at 9:05 am
Interesting table, although I have some trouble with defining blogs as one to many communication. I realize that the majority of the blogs are the act of individuals, but I personally joined a weblog for my study at the University of Amsterdam, which was maintained by 30 students (see http://managementvanimmaterielewaarden.blogspot.com).
We used this weblog to share important articles, information, links and to discuss topics. It’s main goal was to support in creating a shared understanding and negotiated meaning. This way this blog was used as some form of a collaboration tool which was supportive to the formation of a community of practice.
I think this is just an example of a different implementation of the weblog concept, which in our case worked extremely well for our understanding of the topics we discussed.