Not as manipulative a headline as you might think! Google announced it had acquired Jotspot today, and Socialtext announced “SocialPoint”, a wiki for SharePoint, on Monday. The timing of these announcements may be accidental, but Socialtext and JotSpot were very competitive and have countered each other’s releases before. In any case this is big news for the enterprise wiki world, and good news for many, including the other enterprise wiki vendors – at least in the short term since the market is so young.
This will obviously be a hot topic in our Collaboration & Enterprise Blogs & Wikis Track in Boston at the end of the month, especially in the Enterprise Wiki CEO/CTO Panel where Socialtext, MindTouch, Traction, CustomerVision, and eTouch will debate – maybe Google can join them… Enterprise wiki vendors Atlassian and SilkRoad will also be there.
Note we are again hosting an “American Idol” type contest along with CMS Watch, but this year it is an “Enterprise Wiki Idol” instead of a CMS Idol. This is a free event in the demo area. More information including the judges and contestants is here.
There is a lot of commentary on this week’s announcements. See what our friends at Between the Lines, Dan Farber and David Berlind have to say, as well as Don Dodge (Microsoft), and Ross Mayfield (Socialtext).
I concur that this deal validates the business case for the enterprise wiki, but enterprises will be cautious with trusting their data to free public servers. We at eTouch, of course, are looking forward to the conference and participating in the debate.