Today is the 16th birthday of the web’s first wiki. The web owes a great debt to Ward Cunningham for starting the first wiki 16 years ago today at Wiki Wiki Web (although that is debatable, I suppose, for wiki …

Qwiki, the startup backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim is, not surprisingly, gaining a lot of attention. The company can add winning TechCrunch Disrupt to its resume as well. So, what is this startup doing to gain all this attention?

Last year, a Google patent application was released for “Identifying inadequate search content“.  This is described as, “systems and methods for identifying inadequate search content are provided. Inadequate search content, for example, can be identified based on statistics associated with …

We recently spoke with Jack Herrick, founder of wikiHow, about how wikiHow’s quality differs from a site like eHow, which is often labeled a content farm with suspect quality. Herrick’s insight on this is particularly interesting, given that he used to run eHow, before selling to Demand Media. 

Herrick has now shared more information with us about the quality control process at wikiHow. We’ll let you be the judge on how effective it is. 

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has launched a searchable wiki with the goal of providing the public with easy-to-access info on every "substantive resolution" approved by the Board of Directors.

Companies have long had problems putting numbers on social media marketing results. Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group have now released a study looking at how engagement with consumers through social media correlates with financial performance.

PBwiki announced the release of its mobile edition today. This is the first of its kind to be released for smartphones.

For those unfamiliar with PBwiki whose CEO Jim Groff formerly worked for Oracle and Apple, it is a commercial wiki site said to be named after the concept that making a wiki should be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.

 Socialtext is making big news all over the Web this morning. Here’s a rundown, later in the post I’ll talk about why.

Generally speaking, a press release can give you all the information you’ll want about a given business deal.  But press releases sometimes ignore important things like money, and include a bunch of extra garbage about how wonderful all the involved companies are.  Newly launched Dealipedia.com aims to organize and streamline information.

There is no such thing as a free link.  No matter what the person who is selling you it tells you.  And the web will always adapt to make it so.  Even if its hard work.

Barry Schwartz posted Get A Free Link From Wired today on an SEO blog, noting that:

In keeping with the “open media” vision described by Yahoo Music exec Ian Rogers in his latest call to arms (which I wrote about yesterday), Yahoo launched a second iteration of its browser-based music player — this one allowing anyone to add a line of Javascript and have a Yahoo-branded player pop up wherever there’s an mp3 link.

When it comes to financial matters, I like to play it safe.  Bubble Boy-safe.  So the concept of a wiki for investors makes me a little nervous.  But Wikinvest apparently inspired enough confidence in some onlookers to win $2.5 million in funding.

In the past you would remember how I have been talking about wikis over here to reflect how they are some of the most interesting and refreshing social software tools out there to help boost knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst different teams, communities and whatever other groups.

Some CEOs are forced out.  Some CEOs quit.  But I’ve never seen a CEO do quite what Ross Mayfield, the CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, is doing; Mayfield is advertising for his successor.  Chalk the odd move up to Socialtext’s position as “the leading enterprise wiki.”

After publishing, "The Future of Communications – A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing," I decided to take a short break. I wanted it to reside online for people to discover before it was pushed down the page with every post to follow.

Oh, how I hate when social networking software tries to be my parent.

Jon Udell touches on this in his post about Facebook: “how do I know this person?”

See, the developers who make this software really want to make it hard for you to add more friends. And what the hell is up with calling everyone a “friend” anyway.