2. Competitors of Wiki:
2.1. A potential threat to Wiki—Knol
Knol is a Google project which aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics. The project was led by Google, it was announced on December 13, 2007 and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field. On January 16, 2009, Google announced that Knol had grown to 100,000 articles, and users from 197 countries and territories visit Knol on an average day. [7]
The difference between Knol and Wiki is that Google planned to display the real information of the author after every article, so all the ownership belong to the authors.
Compared to the 2,702,519 articles of Wiki, it is less. In view of that it is open for less than 8 months, it’s a great success. Furthermore, because of Google’s dominant position on Internet, I think Knol must be a threat to Wiki after some years.
2.2 The Second Most Popular Internet Reference Site after Wiki—Yahoo answers
Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Yahoo! on December 13, 2005 that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users. The site gives members the chance to earn points as a way to encourage participation and is based on Naver's Knowledge iN.
Points are earned as per following Points Table:
| Action | Point |
| Begin participating on Yahoo! Answers | One time: 100 |
| Ask a question | -5 |
| Choose a best answer for your question | 3 |
| No Best Answer was selected by voters on your question | Points Returned: 5 |
| Answer a question | 2 |
| Deleting an answer | -2 |
| Log in to Yahoo! Answers | Once daily: 1 |
| Vote for a best answer | 1 |
| Vote for No best answer | 0 |
| Have your answer selected as the best answer | 10 |
| Receive a "thumbs-up" rating on a best answer that you wrote (up to 50 thumbs-up are counted) | 1 per "thumbs-up" |
As of December 2006, it had 60 million users and 65 million answers. On June 11, 2007, Yahoo!'s former questions and answers service, Ask Yahoo!, was formally merged with Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Answers has become the second most popular Internet reference site after Wikipedia, according to Comscore. [8]
The difference between Wiki and Yahoo Answers is that a wiki is a Web site that enables users to add new content or amend existing content, but the users of Yahoo Answers can only give their own answers. In fact, not only Yahoo Answer, but also all the blogs do not allow people to edit other people’s answer. So the answers in Wiki often look much more professional than in Yahoo Answers and the blogs and people must think the Wiki is more reliable. In my mind, it is a reason that Wiki is more popular than Yahoo Answers.
2.3 Other competitor—Uclue
Uclue is a fee-based research service staffed by former Google Answers Researchers (GARs). Uclue launched on February 28, 2007 . As of May 2007, 37 former Google Answers Researchers have signed on to answer questions at Uclue. Researchers are located in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines. Thanks to this international diversity, Uclue is able to provide research and translation in English, German, Spanish, Tagalog, and conversational French. Over 1000 people from 6 continents have registered at Uclue as both clients and commentators. (Commentators are non-researchers who post helpful comments on questions and answers.) As of July 2008, over 2100 questions have been posted at Uclue.[9]
I think it is hard for Uclue to compete with Wiki.
First of all, Wiki is free but Uclue is a fee-base research service. Last year, Google answer, another fee-based research service, is retired. Although it did not announce the reason in public, but all people think it is due to the fee. The user must pay 2~200 dollars to get the answers. Now Uclue also need the users to pay the fee. Compared the free service, Wiki and Yahoo Answer, it is an obvious disadvantage.
Furthermore, Google Answer has a great supporter, Google. But now Uclue has not such a supporter. So in my mind, its result will not be better than Google Answer.
