You’d never expect another form of web publishing can herald a new era right after blogs. It’s not pervasive yet, but we can smell its breakthrough will come very soon.

Answer: Wikis

Essentially, wikis contain a core web technology which allows more than one person to access, edit and update a web page in real-time. You may have heard of Wikipedia. For example, a long time ago the very first person created a page on the biography of Tom Cruise, but his knowledge is limited. Subsequent people chipped in to contribute their own set of knowledge, thereby expanding the biography to great length.

Collaborative publishing enable people to contribute for the greater, common good. The point is, any form of collaborative technology or business model that is designed rightly and used precisely can create successful communities of trust to keep the momentum and participants going. Online networking sites like Friendster is another example. You can say Yahoo! Groups too, or some mailing list directories. These sites with an orientation towards communities and groupings naturally tend to draw lots of visitors (and thus business) to patronize them.

We want to introduce a new service called JotSpot. It is starting out in the do-it-yourself publishing arena with Wikis, but the long-term ambition is to organize groups of people and share information much more effectively than is possible via messy e-mail forwarding. There is a need to streamline and clear up the current inefficient way of online information distribution within organizations regardless of their size.

You can read this interview with Joe Kraus, a co-founder of JotSpot.