Wiki-Builder Website Wetpaint Welcomes $9.5 Million Funding

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jan 9, 2007

Seattle, WA based Wetpaint makes it a cinch for users to create wikis.  Wetpaint raised $9.5 million to enhance marketing from Accel Partners and other previous investors, Trinity Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures.

To learn how easy it is to create wikis using Wetpaint, I decided to test it out.  The first step is to name and describe your site.

You decide a name, decide a subdomain name, and select three available categories to choose what your site is about:

Secondly, you decide who can edit your site whether it is everyone, anyone with a Wetpaint account, or only people that you would like to invite:

After this basic information is entered, there are several themes that you can choose from. The very last step is to actually create a Wetpaint Account by filling out a username, password, and e-mail address.  Once you create an account, a confirmation e-mail is sent to you.

The navigation on the right side of the page makes it easy for users to edit content, add comments, e-mail the page, invite others, and add new pages to the wiki.

From a business strategy standpoint, if Wetpaint was able to raise $14.75 million total within a year, then I would have to admit that the Wetpaint is vulnerable to the threat of substitutes.  However, Wetpaint has an advantage of brand name recognition.  In six months, Wetpaint has generated 150,000 wikis.  The major selling point of Wetpaint is that big media companies, AOL, CBS, T-Mobile, ABC, and several others are creating community sites within Wetpaint.

Other related deals revolving around wikis include JotSpot being acquired by Google and Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales’ developing a search engine called Wikiasari.