How to track wiki startups?

May 13, 2009 11:55 PM

Where might I find evidence that there was a surge of wiki startups circa 2005, which has since tapered off?

This is just a hunch I have, but if it's true, I'd like to use the argument in a job application I'm preparing.

My dream would be to find an annual list of "100 hot startups" from Business 2.0 or some such magazine. I could then count how many of those were wiki-related. But I haven't found such a list.

Does anyone know of something like that? Can anyone suggest an alternative methodology?

posted by teracloth to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I would maybe search techcrunch or readwriteweb or mashable for wiki services. You should be able to do a google blogsearch that is restricted to a range of dates. Then perhaps find how many hits there are for each yr after 2005? Voilà?
posted by mhh5 at 1:43 AM on May 14

I would probably brute-force this by looking at Wikipedia's List of wiki software, picking out the ones that qualify as startups, and arranging them in order of launch date.
posted by dreamyshade at 1:51 AM on May 14

Are you in a university and do you have access to Gartner Group reports? They publish information on these topics - in particular hype cycles.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 5:43 PM on May 14