wikinvest






 * Paul Miers**

//Wikinvest is an independent financial data wiki that shows how to bypass the gate keepers and get a reputation for being an expert in your field.//

Wikinvest is perhaps the best example I have seen of how a wiki can be turned into a slick social media site that combines the power of crowdsourcinginformation on wiki pages with the immediacy of a blog. It was founded in 2006 by Parker Conrad and Mike Sha, then undergraduate business students at Harvard, and claims to have over 250,000 contributors. Some are CEOs and professional analysts; others are business students and amateur investors. Everyone is invited to help write articles, edit pages, and define terms.

What particularly impresses me is how the Wikinvest team has customized the wiki program MediaWiki. Most notable is the site's own blog, //The Daily Angle//, which aggregates posts from other sites and offers original posts from Wikinvest contributors:

rss url="http://blogs.wikinvest.com/dailyangle/feed" link="true" number="7"

So, in addition to using Wikinvest as a source for business information, you might also consider becoming a contributor or even starting your own dedicated wiki. Being a Wikinvest contributor is a way for undergraduates to enhance their resumes and gain a reputation as a Gen-Y maven. Starting your own wiki in the new social media landscape could be the first step on the path to running your own business. All you need are some friends who share your interest in some topic, at least one of whom knows something about customizing cascading style sheets. The WikiMedia program itself is free, and web site hosting services are relatively cheap.



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