Chris Yeh, investor and executive over at PBWiki, just dropped us a line to let us know of the public release of PBWiki version 2.0:
“As you know, there’s been a lot of activity in the wiki/collaboration space recently, especially with the launch of Google Sites. I thought that PBwiki’s first major overhaul could make for a good story, especially since we’re approaching the 500,000 wiki mark. “
He sent over access to play with the demo product, which includes a slew of new features including the addition of folders, page- and folder-level access controls, and a more professional, more usable, more easily customizable look and feel. This adds a new level of improvement to the organization of the system with additional granular access controls.
The easiest thing to notice about the system is that they’ve improved the user interface to allow for a much more professional look to the wiki. Chris put together in what he says was approximately 15 seconds with the color picker, and another 3 or so uploading the Mashable logo.
Chris Yeh and I had a good conversation several weeks ago shortly after the announced launch of Google Sites (aka JotSpot). He took a bit of time to explain the differences in their approach at PBWiki to tackle a slightly different market than what Google seems to be going after (embed at bottom of post). In our email communication today, he illuminated a bit more on that train of thought:
Google’s entry into the market is a great validation of the space, and should be a huge driver of awareness for collaboration in general and wikis in particular (even if Google doesn’t use that term to describe Google Sites). Google will also lend weight to the SaaS versus Microsoft SharePoint debate.
Specifically, however, Google Sites is not a threat to PBwiki…yet. Automattic, SixApart, and Omniture seem to be doing just fine, despite the presence of Blogger and Google Analytics. Google Sites is a simple, attractive-looking wiki product whose strength lies in the Google brand and the fact that it offers 10 GB of free storage.
It is not enterprise-ready, since it is only available to Google Apps users (excluding most of corporate America as well as most schools), subject to Google’s usual terms of service (which gives Google the right to syndicate your content or cut you off at any point), unsuited for large deployments (only offers global sitewide security), and offers no service level agreements.
You can hear more along those lines and commentary on the Google Sites/PBWiki comparison here. The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
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