AboutUsCompetitiveLandscape
AboutUs is one of many wikis currently emerging in the marketplace. Websites with similar strategies inclue:
Wikis
These direct competitors have a very similar strategy. AboutUs.org is far ahead of all of them in both activity and traffic.
- WikiCompany
- BCZ Directory
- Yellowikis
- Wikidweb (Wiki Directory of the Web)
- Wikiology
- Qweki
- Richdex
Local Search
These companies do not have a "wiki" concept. Instead they allow the website owner full control over the content published in their site. GoDaddy is the world's largest registrar and has significant reach over registrants. Unfortunately, this may make them a difficult partner to engage with in the future. RegisterLocal is successful to date, but they focus only on the "owner side" and are not wiki based. The existance of these sites indicates that there is a market for the creation of "owner verified" information.
Web site data
These companies provide general information about other websites. Site Advisor helps people know which sites are spyware, spam or scams ahead of time. It requires the downloading of a browser plug-in. Alexa is extremely popular because it shows basic website information. AboutUs.org refers to the Alexa traffic statistics to compare the traffic between our websites and others. TrailFire allows people to annotate and share their browsing experience and is not yet as popular as Site Advisor or Alexa. StumbleUpon leverages the recommendations of other websurfers with a quick and easy toolbar and thumbs up/down voting mechanism.
Although these sites are not wikis and do not focus on the same types of content that AboutUs.org does, they could be competitive in the future due to their existing significant penetration.
- Site Advisor
- Alexa
- Compete new competitor of Alexa (launched Nov 1st 2006)
- TrailFire
- StumbleUpon
- DomainTools part of Name Intelligence
Website Directories
Domain directories provide a taxonomy in which users can find websites via a heirarchical structure. The dmoz project is neat because it is maintained by volunteers -- a great example of the power of collaboration. Google Directory uses that information and further sorts the information by its own PageRank.
Dmoz is a great project, but AboutUs has some key advantages: It is easier to edit, it can store richer information about each website and it uses a "tagging", vs "taxonomical" approach. By tagging information, it is easier for users to categorize websites and more forgiving when an error is made.
- dmoz (Directory Mozilla)
- Google Directory
General knowledge
These companies provide general information and do not have a focus on websites. We feel that they would only be competitive with articles written on AboutUs.org which are not website specific.
Need to refactor this
Wikis
- List of largest wikis
- Yellowikis ... open business listings
- Wikia ... a collection of communities with websites that you can edit
- EditMe.com ... WYSIWYG wiki farm
- Wiki.com
- Richdex - 4690079 pages
- Qweki - 4354641 pages
- wikimapia
- LoveToKnow
- Wikiasari ... wiki search
- http://www.wikiindex.org/index.php?title=WebsiteWiki 200,000 german websites cateloged in a wiki
Reputation
Topsoil
Other projects
- ThinkFree
- EditableWeb.com
- Edit.com
- EditLet.com
- EasySiteEdit.com
- editus.com available for around $7,000 ... editus.org is a freelance copy editor ... editus.net is parked
- godaddy ... trafficblazer
- myspace
- zoominfo ... The search engine for discovering people, companies, and relationships
- urlinfo ... a tool for handling web pages: finding information about it, translating it, finding related pages, etc.
- Quatcast.com
- ListAfterList.com
Clones
- http://www.getacoder.com/projects/website_clone_45703.html
- http://www.getacoder.com/projects/clone_web_site_help_45703.html
- http://www.getafreelancer.com/users/151370.html
- http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/Website-Design/Project-for-pan.html
- http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/logankoester_128414.html
Search
- http://www.aboutus.org/AfterVote.com Social Search
Response
Many sites are launched and suffer from lack of traffic because people are simply not interested in what is published. AboutUs.org data is about existing sites and therefore immediately interesting and perhaps compelling to at least the site owner, its clients and wider audience.
AboutUs’ advantage lies not only in its ability to seed pages with key information because of its strong industry relationships, but also in the fact that AboutUs is one big wiki that can interconnect and easily take advantage of the power inherent in wiki technology–the power to interlink. This ability is what enables visitors to AboutUs to create portals of information that link both educational and commercial sites, allowing the visitors themselves to build the information portal that is most useful to them.