AboutUs Website Wiki Adds Features

I stumbled on AboutUs completely by accident one day while handling an issue with my WhoIs domain registration. When I went to the WhoIs page to follow up on a possible hack of my domain registry, I saw a small link to "AboutUs" and clicked. I was taken to a page offering to make a Wiki about my web site. I clicked yes out of curiosity, and seconds later my web site had its very own wiki page on AboutUs with absolutely no effort from me.

I went around to the rest of my domains making wikis that day, and once i was done I thought nothing else of it. Then this week an embargoed announcement went across the Profy news desk that AboutUs was adding new features. This immediately reminded me of how easy it was to set up my Wikis, so I snapped up the article so I could see what was being released, in hopes that is was just as helpful and easy as the Wiki feature itself.

First on the list is free monitoring. This feature sounds promising, and is the first of its kind on any Wiki service. It means that any website Wiki can be monitored for any changes. This is a handy feature for any Wiki - it means that now when people make a change to your website wiki you will be alerted, and can correct any errors or monitor and press you are getting, both bad and good. This is perhaps my favorite feature of the three announced today.

The second feature is a chance to have a Premium account on the AboutUs network. AboutUs has priced these out at $99 USD, and they are offering a chance to preview the Premium package for a limited time by following these instructions:

How can I see these products prior to their launch?

Login by going to this page, for example, promoteme.aboutus.org/Deehan.com The username is "preview" and the password is "secretpreview".

We would like to encourage you to go through the premium service purchase process (use Master Card# 5105105105105100 and any exp. date as credit card info) to see how the experience works. If you do so prior to the night before launch, AboutUs staff will create a Premium Page on AboutUs for your website. That way you can see how the whole Premium Service works and how the end result looks.

I am not sure I see the value of the Premium package. I find the services they offer for free to be more than enough for my needs, but perhaps your site or company would benefit from their Premium products, so by all means check out the secret preview for yourself to decide. Then come back and let me know how the Premium features worked for you in the comments.

The third feature announced today is the Portal feature. This allows information to be aggregated into a Portal based on a topic. This places information on a topic in one area and is especially useful in gathering and driving information over a network like a large company or a city. AboutUs has created an example for you to view at the Portland Tech Portal page.

The Portal feature could be the most useful of the three features. By bringing all of the information on a larger topic into one place, you give more people a chance to find not only information about the larger topic, for example technology, but also how it relates to a similar topic, such as their city or business. Integrated Wiki information able to be edited by multiple authors instead of only one page per topic is an innovative way to aggregate data and make it more accessible.

AboutUs is offering a way for companies to sponsor Portals as well, which is an interesting concept. It is also offering ways to integrate the features of the new Premium service with the Portal feature and the tracking feature and make your website Wiki have the most functionality possible. It's a new way to use the Wiki platform, and it could bring much needed support and traffic to websites, especially larger corporate websites and city or state sites. You can read more about the new features and find out if they are right for your business on the AboutUs release page.

Edited 1/10/08 at 4:11 PM EST to fix a broken link.