collaborative projects (social media application): about wikipedia

Author's personal copy

Collaborative projects (social mediaapplication): About Wikipedia, the freeencyclopedia

Andreas Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein

ESCP Europe, 79 Avenue de la Republique, F-75011 Paris, France

1. Contents

In 1439, a German goldsmith had the idea of sellingpolished metal mirrors to pilgrims in order to cap-ture the holy light emitted from religious relics. Hisplan was to piggyback on a major exhibition of therelics collection of Charlemagne that the city of

Aachen had planned for the same year. However,due to bad weather conditions, the exhibition wascancelled and the goldsmith was confronted by agroup of angry investors. To satisfy their financialdemands, he came up with a fallback plan: hedeveloped the printing press, with which he subse-quently produced several copies of the bible. Few ofhis contemporaries–—including the pope at the time,Eugene IV–—would have thought that this inventionof Johannes Gutenberg would usher in the beginningof a period when books and knowledge would be-come rapidly and widely available, but it did. Among

Business Horizons (2014) 57, 617—626

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirectwww.elsevier.com/locate/bushor

KEYWORDSSocial media;Collaborative projects;Wisdom of crowds;Wikipedia;Delicious;Pinterest;TripAdvisor

Abstract Collaborative projects–—defined herein as social media applications thatenable the joint and simultaneous creation of knowledge-related content by manyend-users–—have only recently received interest among a larger group of academics.This is surprising since applications such as wikis, social bookmarking sites, onlineforums, and review sites are probably the most democratic form of social media andreflect well the idea of user-generated content. The purpose of this article is toprovide insight regarding collaborative projects; the concept of wisdom of crowds, anessential condition for their functioning; and the motivation of readers and con-tributors. Specifically, we provide advice on how firms can leverage collaborativeprojects as an essential element of their online presence to communicate bothexternally with stakeholders and internally among employees. We also discuss howto address situations in which negative information posted on collaborative projectscan become a threat and PR crisis for firms.# 2014 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. Allrights reserved.

* Corresponding authorE-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Kaplan),

[email protected] (M. Haenlein)

0007-6813/$ — see front matter # 2014 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.05.004


others, the Gutenberg Bible became a main contrib-uting factor toward the creation of Protestantism byMartin Luther about 70 years later.

In the 550+ years since, printed books have be-come the main instrument via which to transmitknowledge and have revolutionized every aspect ofhuman life. Today, however, printed books are start-ing to be replaced by a more popular form oftransmitting ‘truth’–—namely, collaborative proj-ects. The most popular representation of this isthe Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Founded inJanuary 2001, Wikipedia today includes over30 million articles written in 287 languages by75,000 active editors, read by more than 350 millionpeople around the world. What started with thesentence ‘‘Hello world. Humor me. Go there andadd a little article. It will take all of five or tenminutes’’ has become the 6th most popular websiteon the planet. But unlike Google (#1), Yahoo (#4),and Amazon (#5), Wikipedia is a non-profit organi-zation owned by the charitable Wikimedia Founda-tion; as will be explained, this specific form oforganizational structure is crucial to its success.

Similar to the printing press, Wikipedia has been acatalyst for the diffusion of knowledge. Today, everyhigh school student can use her cell phone to accessthe mobile version of Wikipedia (Kaplan, 2012)and read all there is to know about the Einstein—Maxwell—Dirac equations (a concept related toquantum field theory) or the latest episodes ofthe X-Factor. Whoever uses Google to look for infor-mation–—that is, most everyone–—will stumble uponWikipedia sooner rather than later. What is true iswritten on Wikipedia and what is written on Wiki-pedia must be true–—at least, most of the time.Exceptions include cases in which Wikipedia hasbeen used to purposefully spread false information,such as that involving American journalist JohnSeigenthaler, who was falsely accused of being in-volved in the assassination of the Kennedy brothers.Readers interested in more examples of incorrectinformation on Wikipedia should check out the arti-cle on the reliability of the online encyclopedia,published–—of course–—on Wikipedia.

In addition to their general impact on society atlarge, collaborative projects also have an influenceon the corporate world. Positively, they allow con-sumers to exchange product information more easilythan ever before. In the long run this reduces costlycall center interactions because consumers can findanswers to their questions online, posted by otherconsumers, instead of contacting the firm directly.This concept–—referred to in the literature as cus-tomer knowledge value–—has recently garnered in-terest among researchers in the field of marketing(Kumar et al., 2010). Negatively, the fact that

ordinary people and journalists alike make use ofand believe the information on Wikipedia createsthe need for managing this platform in a conscien-tious way. Otherwise, firms might find themselves inthe same position as clothing retailers GAP and H&M,which are listed on Wikipedia as two recent exam-ples of child labor incidents.

Our aim in this article is to provide an introduc-tion regarding collaborative projects and to illus-trate how companies may make use of them. We firstpresent a 4-group classification of this type of socialmedia application (wikis, social bookmarking sites,forums, and review sites) before discussing eachelement’s theoretical basis (wisdom of crowds)and user characteristics (readers and contributors).We then turn to the corporate use of Wikipedia andspecifically present the three bases of getting yourentry into Wikipedia, as well as a set of guidelinesthat help manage the potential Wikipedia crisis thatmight happen one day. Finally, we present thebroader application of collaborative projects withincompanies, how they can help enhance employee-to-employee interactions, and whether to rely onself-developed or third-party platforms.

2. Theoretical concepts

2.1. Classification

In the most general sense, collaborative projects area special form of social media application that enablethe joint and simultaneous creation of knowledge-related content by many end-users. Whereas blogcontent is authored by a single person or a few editorsand may later be commented on by others, collabo-rative projects are different in that they allow allusers to equally post, add, or change content. In thissense they are probably the most democratic form ofsocial media, which can be defined as ‘‘a group ofInternet-based applications that build on the ideo-logical and technological foundations of Web 2.0, andthat allow the creation and exchange of User Gener-ated Content’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61).Other forms of social media include blog/micro-blogs(e.g., Twitter; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011a), contentcommunities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites(e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World ofWarcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g., SecondLife; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009).

Within this broad group of collaborative projects,we differentiate four types. The first type is wikis,which owe their name to the Hawaiian word for fastand allow users to add, delete, or revise content ona webpage by using a simple web browser as op-posed to a more advanced HTML editor. The first

618 A. Kaplan, M. Haenlein


wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was developed by the Americancomputer programmer Ward Cunningham in 1995and focused on discussing website design patterns.It was named after the WikiWiki Shuttle, a bus linerunning between the airport terminals at HonoluluInternational Airport, instead of using the moreordinary title ‘quick web.’

The second type of collaborative project is socialbookmarking sites, or collaborative tagging ser-vices. They allow users to assign tags to bookmarksof web documents that can subsequently be orga-nized in the form of tag clouds: visual representa-tions of tags, the importance of each indicated by itsfont size or color. The resulting classification ofcontent is sometimes referred to as folksonomy, aportmanteau of folk and taxonomy. The most widelyknown representative of this type of collaborativeproject is probably Delicious, which was founded in2003 and today has more than 5 million users and1 billion linked bookmarks.

The third type of collaborative project is onlineforums or message boards, via which people can holdconversations in the form of posted messages. Asopposed to wikis, forums usually do not allow usersto edit content posted by others, but rather onlyrespond to or discuss this content within their ownpostings. The right of editing is limited to forumadministrators or moderators. Also, forums only countas collaborative projects when their focus is on thejoint creation of knowledge. Forums with a differentpurpose (e.g., dating sites) should not be consideredcollaborative projects but rather social networkingapplications, another form of social media.

The fourth and final type of collaborative projectis review sites: websites that focus on exchangingfeedback regarding firms, products, and anythingelse of relevance in human life. Prime examples inthis category include TripAdvisor and Epinions.com.Review sites usually employ some form of reputationsystem that allows them to compute reliabilityscores based on ratings received within user re-views. These systems are supposed to avoid strate-gic manipulation of the content posted, althoughresearch has shown that this is not always as effi-cient as it should be (Dellarocas, 2006; Mayzlin,Dover, & Chevalier, 2012).

Looking at the four types of collaborative proj-ects shows that they can be grouped along twodimensions. The first dimension is the type of knowl-edge that is created within the collaborative proj-ect. While contributions on wikis and socialbookmarking sites usually deal with describing ob-jective facts (e.g., a Wikipedia discussion on theproduction of The Hunger Games movie or a collec-tion of links on Delicious related to the Linux oper-ating system), forums and review sites tend to

collect subjective assessments and opinions (e.g.,evaluations of books, video games, or hotels). Thesecond dimension deals with the mutual indepen-dence of individual contributions. Wikis and forumsare fundamentally based on the idea of exchangeand reaction in the sense that each contributor islikely to have read previous contributions and tohave considered them in their own addition; con-tributions therefore depend on each other. This isdifferent from social bookmarking and review sites,via which contributions might be posted indepen-dent from each other. These two dimensions form atwo-by-two matrix along which the four differenttypes of collaborative projects can be grouped, asillustrated in Figure 1.

2.2. The wisdom of crowds

Collaborative projects can lead to results of surpris-ingly high quality. As early as 2005, only 4 years afterthe creation of Wikipedia, a study published inNature compared the accuracy of Wikipedia articlesto those of the Encyclopedia Britannica and showedthat both had similar rates of ‘‘serious errors’’(Gilles, 2005). This empirically illustrates that thejoint effort of a large number of actors can lead tobetter outcomes than each individual actor couldachieve independently–—an idea usually referred toas the wisdom of crowds. In behavioral finance, aconsequence of this is the efficient-market hypoth-esis, which states that no investor can consistentlyachieve higher-than-average returns unless she/hepossesses unique information (Fama, 1970). Indeed,it has been shown that Wikipedia has a considerableinfluence on investors and management disclosurefor publicly traded companies (Xu & Zhang, 2013).In day-to-day life, the wisdom of crowds is well-illustrated by the Who Wants To Be A Millionairetelevision show player help feature, ‘Ask the Audi-ence’ lifeline, which results in accurate answers innine out of ten cases.

Yet in order to be wise the crowd needs to fulfillthree criteria. Specifically, it needs to (1) be suffi-ciently large and (2) consist of a diverse set of actorsthat (3) act independently from each other (Suro-wiecki, 2004). These conditions help explain whyarticles of general interest to a large and diversegroup of people–—which ensures a high number ofdiverse contributors–—tend to be those of the high-est quality. For example, the Wikipedia entry de-scribing the president of the United States is morelikely to be accurate than the one dealing with thepresident of Nauru, an island country in Micronesia(both entries actually exist).

The problem, however, is that for wikis andforums the condition of independent actors is

Collaborative projects (social media application): About Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 619


usually violated since any contributor will have readthe comments made by others before making addi-tions or modifications (see Figure 1). Particularlycontroversial Wikipedia entries or edits are dis-cussed in great detail on talk or discussion pagesbefore final publication. This tends to be less criticalfor forums since they deal with rather subjectiveopinions anyway. But for Wikipedia–—the focus ofwhich lies on objective facts–—the issue is moresevere. To circumvent any biases resulting from thislack of independence, Wikipedia requires that con-tributors add sources and references wherever pos-sible. This is why articles tend to be particularlygood when they deal with easily verifiable topics(e.g., the foundations of Landau damping, a conceptfamiliar to plasma physicists) as opposed to moreambiguous assessments (e.g., the private life ofactress and singer Marlene Dietrich).

2.3. Readers and contributors

Users of collaborative projects are split into twogroups: those who only consume content (i.e., read-ers) and those who generate content in additionto consuming it (i.e., contributors). Collaborativeprojects characterized by non-independent contri-butions (i.e., wikis and forums; see Figure 1), suchas Wikipedia, necessitate reading before contribu-tion; both groups are covered in such circumstances.

The common characteristic of all users, indepen-dent of whether they are reading or contributing, isthe trust they have in the project in general and thequality of information received in particular. Thisexplains why large sites that have evolved intohousehold names–—such as Wikipedia, Delicious,and TripAdvisor–—tend to possess a disproportion-ately large share of the market. This effect hasbecome so pronounced that topics not covered onWikipedia tend to be perceived as irrelevant, whichhas direct implications for companies that should beinterested in the coverage. Avoiding being presenton collaborative projects is unlikely to be a success-ful solution for most firms.

While trust in the project itself is sufficient forreaders, contributors must also trust administratorsof the project in order to feel the time they invest bymaking contributions is not wasted. It is thereforenot surprising that Wikipedia is owned by a non-profit organization, since users would be far lesswilling to contribute if they felt their work couldlater be sold by the firm for a profit. This is particu-larly true since the share of active contributors isusually very low, which means that losing some ofthem can have significant consequences. WhileWikipedia, for example, has 1.7 million contribu-tors, only about 4.5% of them (75,000) are active inthe sense that they make more than 5 edits permonth. The lion’s share of Wikipedia entries is

Figure 1. Classification of collaborative projects

Collaborative projects (i.e., social mediaapplications that enable the joint and

simultaneous creation of knowledge-relatedcontent by many end-users)

Mutual independence of contributions

Dependent Independent

Type of knowledge

created

Description of

objective facts

Wikis

Contributions deal with

objective facts (e.g., anyobject or topic of

interest)

New contributions buildon and extend previous

contributions (e.g., tocreate one consistentarticle)

Social bookmarking sites


objective facts (e.g., tagclouds related to a

specific topic)

Contributions can beindependent of each

other (e.g., tags createdfor new websites)

Collection of

subjective opinions

Forums


opinions and evaluations

(e.g., advice on how toplay a computer game)

New contributions buildon and extend previous

contributions (e.g., to

elaborate on specificpoints)

Review sites


opinions and evaluations

(e.g., prior personalexperiences of a product)

Contributions can beindependent of each

other (e.g., additional

reviews of the sameproduct)



generated by 10,000 highly active contributors whomake more than 100 edits per month and who tendin profile to be male, about 30 years old, computer-savvy, U.S.-based, and college-educated. To main-tain the diversity of its contributor base, which isessential toward increasing the wisdom of thecrowd, Wikipedia has launched several initiativesthat specifically target women, older people, andcontributors in different geographical areas.

While the motivations of readers are easy tounderstand, the driving forces behind contributorsare less obvious. For some, the key motivation mightbe altruism and simple concern for the welfare ofothers. Yet, altruism tends to be a rare characteris-tic (Leider, Mobius, Rosenblat, & Do, 2009) and otherdrivers may be more likely. For example, contrib-utors might feel an obligation to reciprocate forinformation received, participate due to a wish ofself-presentation (Schau & Gilly, 2003), or obtainpleasure from discussing topics with knowledgeablepeople in the field. Others are driven by the oppositeof altruism and contribute to Wikipedia for oppor-tunistic reasons, such as enhancing their personalbrand or erasing negative information about them-selves or organizations they are attached to.

Many contributors, however, simply like the ideaof being part of a community and therefore contrib-ute to something they can identify with. Researchhas shown that within Wikipedia, different groups ofcontributors exist that share certain ideological,functional, and content-related beliefs. This leadsto a form of commons-based governance that reg-ulates the social structures on the site (Forte, Larco,& Bruckman, 2009). Some subgroups even focus onmechanically conducting certain tasks such as con-trolling articles for format consistency or removinginformation that is not backed up by sources, basedon a shared belief that this improves the overallquality of the project itself.

3. Corporate use of Wikipedia

3.1. Policies and guidelines

As mentioned, Wikipedia is probably the most pop-ular application among the group of collaborativeprojects. Since it usually ranks very high on Google–—right next to or even before an official corporatewebpage, in many instances–—Wikipedia should beconsidered a fundamental piece of the online pres-ence of any firm. Wikipedia will often be the firstsite people check for information regarding a com-pany; for small- and medium-sized firms, being onWikipedia is seen as a sign of legitimacy. It is worthnoting, however, that company-related entries are

often not those with the largest readership. Whilefirms like Coca-Cola and Starbucks can obtain100,000—200,000 views per month, this is still sub-stantially less than the readership of entries oncelebrities like Britney Spears and Justin Bieber,which can reach half a million views or more.

Although collaborative projects in general andWikipedia in particular are democratic by design,policies still exist that users must respect. An un-derstanding of these policies is crucial for compa-nies interested in creating or adding an entry.Specifically, Wikipedia states that it is a neutralencyclopedia without firm rules (we will come backlater to the reasons for this specific type of policy)via which everyone can freely add content andwhere editors should treat each other respectfully.Entries that relate to corporate content–—such asfirm or product descriptions–—should therefore bebased on verifiable facts to maintain neutrality andshould be related to published sources whereverpossible. Any form of advertising would be consid-ered inappropriate and would likely be removed byanother contributor. In the European Union, forexample, such hidden advertising might even beconsidered (illegal) covert advertising, which viola-tes the European Fair Trading Law as recently ruledby a German court.

3.2. The three bases of getting in

If you or your firm try to establish a Wikipediapresence, make sure to do it right the first time;otherwise, you risk being accused of spamming andirrelevance. Your entry will be removed and thetraces of this defeat will stick on Wikipedia for along time: the opposite of what you want to achieve.It’s not a hopeless case, though, as some companieslike Nokia and Apple have outstanding entries in theonline encyclopedia (Lundquist, 2010, 2012). To jointhis group of winners, we have derived three rulesfor creating a successful Wikipedia presence. Wecall these rules ‘the three bases of getting in.’

� First base: Be visible and of interestWikipedia is more likely to feature an organiza-tion when it is considered notable. This requiressignificant coverage by independent secondarysources. Good public relations is one way ofachieving this goal; another is being a topic ofdiscussion in the social media space. So beforetrying to enter Wikipedia, first ensure visibilityelsewhere–—for example, by generating a suc-cessful social buzz (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011b,2012). Alternatively, maximize mentions in otherWikipedia entries, thereby increasing the odds ofhaving an entry on your own one day.



� Second base: Be associated with serious con-tributorsThe likelihood of your Wikipedia entry remaining–—that is, its not being deleted–—depends on whowrote it in the first place. One option entailsclimbing up the ladder and becoming a seriousWikipedia contributor yourself before starting towrite about the firm. Writing entries or improvingexisting articles is the way to go here. If this takestoo long, leverage the reputation of an employeewho is already a highly active contributor. Anotheroption involves attending events where Wikipe-dians meet in real life. Get to know them; theymay like your firm and start writing about it on yourbehalf.

� Third base: Be careful about what you writeIn principle, Wikipedia does not encourage com-panies to edit their own profiles due to inherentconflicts of interest; therefore, anything youadd must be well supported. As a rule of thumb,try to remain as objective and neutral as possi-ble. Wikipedia is about information, not adver-tising or selling. Including a reference link to aweb shop where company merchandise can bebought, for example, is not advisable–—even ifthat link contains relevant information. When indoubt, check with others on the talk page todetermine whether proposed changes are appro-priate; in the end, these will be the people likelyto delete any material that is not. Also, thinkabout regularly checking how your entry looks.Since others can modify and add at their will,regular verification is necessary to avoid badsurprises.

For a good example of how to interact withWikipedia, consider Italian automobile manufacturerFiat. Fiat began participating in Wikipedia becausethe company’s listing was not well structured, mixingdifferent topics such as product (e.g., Fiat Automo-biles) and corporate information (e.g., Fiat Holding).One advantage Fiat possessed was that the person incharge of its corporate communication was alreadyan active Wikipedia contributor for articles not re-lated to the firm. When Fiat relied on this employeeto improve its corporate entry, transparency was therule. While Fiat and its communication agencyworked under a pseudonym, it was always willingto disclose its identity if another contributor askedfor it. However, until today, this question never cameup–—most likely because all changes initiated by Fiatwere informative and factual in nature.

Of course, interacting with other contributors isnot always easy. In 2011, for example, Fiat wantedto change its logo in order to better differentiate

the Fiat Group from the related Fiat brand. Howev-er, another Wikipedia contributor did not agree withthis change and wanted to keep the old logo. Onlyafter explaining to the other party the differencesbetween the two entities (group vs. brand) was thechange finally possible; but, it took some time.When entries or changes are backed up with factualinformation, Wikipedia will edit in the correct di-rection sooner or later. Yet, you should give up theidea of such a thing as a Wikipedia communicationstrategy, since entries are usually only in part–—if atall–—controllable by the firm.

3.3. The bad and the ugly: Crisismanagement

At some point–—unfortunately, likely sooner ratherthan later–—the day will come when other contrib-utors will add some form of negative information toyour entry. A recent study analyzed the evolution ofthe Wikipedia entries of a set of Fortune 500 com-panies and revealed that as they get older, thearticles tend to become more negative and includemore information regarding legal concerns andscandals (DiStaso & Messner, 2010). This implies thatcrisis management should be an essential part ofyour Wikipedia strategy. The situation may neveroccur, but if it does, we provide three pieces ofadvice on how best to handle it.

� First, edit yourselfThe first option entails correcting negative infor-mation yourself–—if, and only if, it is truly wrongand misleading–—by using the talk page. Whenresponding, try to remain neutral and respectfultoward other contributors. Remember the gener-al rules of using social media: be interesting,humble, and honest (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).Pretending to be someone else and hiding yourcorporate affiliation is unlikely to work since toolssuch as WikiScanner help automatically identifythe origin of anonymous edits. Companies includ-ing Coca-Cola, EA Games, and The New YorkTimes have been accused of relying on PR firmsto manage their Wikipedia presence rather thanopenly and transparently doing so themselves.

� Second, put things into perspectiveWhen correcting negative information is notpossible, try counterbalancing it by adding morepositive elements about your firm, as long asthe facts are interesting and verifiable. If it fitsthe article structure and readability, add the posi-tive information before the negative as manyreaders will not scroll to the end of the pageand search engines often focus on text at the



top rather than text at the bottom. Alternatively,encapsulate the negative information into a mix ofpositive or neutral statements since more peoplewill read only the beginning and end of a para-graph, not a long text. If all of this is not possible,you might edit the negative section by replacingnumerals (99) with words (ninety-nine), since thisis also less likely to be read. Add pictures to drawfocus away from the negative content. Thesestrategies can only be short-term solutions, how-ever, and may be considered borderline to theprinciple of honesty in social media. Ultimately,the only surefire way of eliminating negative in-formation about your firm lies in addressing theroot of the problem.

� Third, get help from friends and familyWhile it might be frowned upon for the companyto edit its own corporate entry, nothing forbidsyou from activating Facebook fans, Twitter fol-lowers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011a), and YouTubesubscribers to do so on your behalf–—if they arewilling, of course; followers and likers might bemore critical than you think. Yet, since they havean affinity for your firm, they may be willing tolend a hand. This highlights the point that com-pany Wikipedia presence will be particularly use-ful if it is embedded within a larger social mediastrategy. In the end, if negative information istruly incorrect and all other attempts to correct ithave failed, you can raise the issue with one of theWikipedia notice boards (like the Conflict of In-terest board or the Administrators’ board) andhope for help there. The last resort is to have yourpage protected, which limits the number of peo-ple who will be able to edit it. To engage in legalactions against Wikipedia or one of its contrib-utors is certainly not a good idea; the buzz sur-rounding such an action is likely to create moreharm than good.

British oil and gas company BP illustrates that thingson Wikipedia can go wrong, even if planned perfect-ly. The company, which was runner-up for BestCorporate Page in 2012, has an internal Wikipediaengagement team that manages its entry. This teamis headed by Arturo Silva, who acts under the ac-count ‘Arturo BP’ and clearly discloses his relation-ship to BP on his user page. All content provided byArturo is based on news sources and, if in doubt, hechecks with internal subject matter experts to en-sure the accuracy of edits. Overall, it is safe to saythat BP has respected the guidelines and rules wehave outlined.

Still, BP came under heavy criticism when otherWikipedians noticed that approximately 44% of the

entry had been written by BP itself, including sec-tions covering the company’s environmental record.BP responded immediately by saying that edits werecompletely consistent with Wikipedia rules and fo-cused on improving the overall accuracy of thearticle. BP spokesperson Scott Dean even receivedsupport from one of the two co-founders of Wiki-pedia, Jimmy Wales, who confirmed that no ruleshad been broken. However, unlike Las Vegas, whathappens on Wikipedia does not stay on Wikipedia,but instead spreads rapidly to Google and otherInternet sources. Consequently, BP was faced withnegative press. This example shows that social me-dia in general and Wikipedia in particular are inter-active and complex systems that cannot be fullyplanned in advance. It is therefore critical to pre-pare for the worst and have a plan in place to dealwith such cases, even if they never occur.

4. See also

4.1. Intra-company collaborative projects

Besides informing external stakeholders, collabora-tive projects in general and wikis in particular maybe used for knowledge management within thecompany. One method entails using wikis to shareexisting knowledge, similar to traditional intranetor document management systems. In this context,wikis are often preferred as they tend to be easier touse and are less expensive than a commercial solu-tion. Commercial projects may also be used forgenerating new ideas. In this way, the wisdom ofcrowds is leveraged when an undefined large groupof employees and/or contractors helps to solvecomplex problems or to contribute fresh ideas.The results of such crowdsourcing can be remark-able; instead of relying on a predefined task force orproject team, those in the organization who aremost motivated to perform the task contribute toits solution.

Examples of this form of intra-company collabo-rative project can be found all over the world. TheAnglo-Dutch oil and gas consortium, Shell, launchedShell Wiki in 2006 as a tool to share training materi-als, technical handbooks, and up-to-date knowledgeregarding its different divisions. Finnish handsetmanufacturer Nokia uses wikis to trade ideas andprovide its 100,000+ employees with project up-dates. Other firms prefer to rely on different typesof collaborative projects. The American computersoftware company, Adobe, maintains a list of book-marks and company-related websites on Delicious,and computer manufacturer Dell has an internalidea generation forum called Employee Storm.



When implementing such solutions, companiesshould try to create a pull effect whereby employeeswant to join in the community and contribute, ratherthan being forced to do so. Otherwise, your beautifulcollaborative project will likely die the same death asyour dusty document repository of the late ‘90s.

4.2. Own vs. third-party collaborativeprojects

When companies engage in social media, they mustdecide whether to rely on an existing solution or tocreate a new one (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Up tonow we implicitly assumed the former, but the lattercan be equally successful. Fast-moving consumergoods giant Procter & Gamble, for example, discov-ered through market research that young girls tendto feel uncomfortable viewing TV commercialsabout feminine hygiene products, especially whensurrounded by family. In response, Procter & Gamblecreated the Being Girl forum, which allows teensand preteens to anonymously receive advice andshare questions and experiences–—money well spentsince the forum turned out to be three times moreeffective as a marketing tool than comparablypriced television advertising (Cook, 2008). Similarly,Starbucks founded the My Starbucks Idea forum viawhich customers can submit new ideas for serviceand product improvements.

The same approach works in a business-to-businesssetting. Intuit, a producer of professional tax prepa-ration products, established the Tax Almanac wiki asa resource for tax professionals. On this wiki, pro-fessionals can consult the latest tax legislation andshare comments and interpretations, which are par-ticularly important in this specific industry. As oftoday, Tax Almanac has more than 70,000 articles.It also includes a review forum; no e-commerce site,be it Amazon or eBay, can survive nowadays withoutsome form of review forum included in it. Ratingsprovided on such forums influence consumer choiceso much that firms whose products are not evaluatedfavorably increasingly resort to submitting fake com-ments to boost their image. Recent research hasfocused on this phenomenon, as well as on automatedapproaches to spot such behavior (Mayzlin et al.,2012).

4.3. Other types of collaborative projects

While we have mainly focused on wikis as the primeexample of collaborative projects, there are otherapplications that fall into this group, as highlightedin Section 2.1. and Figure 1. For example, considerthe social bookmarking site Pinterest, which wasfounded in March 2010. Pinterest allows users to

share visuals taken from the Internet and to groupthem into thematic clusters. This can be of interestfor companies since it helps to create a virtualstorefront, the online equivalent of a display window.As revealed by jewelry and accessories retailerBoticca.com, customers acquired this way are likelyto be particularly worth chasing. The firm compared50,000 shoppers referred from Pinterest to 50,000shoppers referred from Facebook and found that itsrevenue per customer is more than twice as high($180 vs. $85) for customers directed from Pinterest.

Another example is forums, which can be a valu-able source of market information for companies.Since forums are usually highly specialized–—forexample, FlyerTalk, an online forum, centers onfrequent-flyer and hotel loyalty programs–—theyare a good place to find opinion leaders who cansubsequently serve as ambassadors for the introduc-tion of new products (Libai, Muller, & Peres, 2005).Alternatively, firms can systematically analyze con-versations on such forums to gain insights that wouldbe difficult to obtain through traditional means in aprocess usually referred to as netnography (Kozinets,2002; Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010).But even without such strategic actions, communitiescan be beneficial for brands. Participation not onlyleads to higher loyalty for the brand but also to thecreation of ‘oppositional loyalty,’ or adversarialviews on competing brands (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001).

Finally, review sites have been of particular im-portance to firms in recent years. If a hotel gets badreviews on TripAdvisor or a new book receives neg-ative comments on Amazon.com, sales can declinerapidly. To some extent, this provides a healthycounterbalance to the rosy marketing messagespushed by companies; on the other hand, it canlead to a dangerous shift in power. Users who areparticularly influential know of their power andmight abuse it to negotiate special deals in ex-change for positive comments. Why not threatenthe hotel concierge with a bad review next timewhen you try to negotiate prices at check-in? Somefirms take a proactive approach to this. For exam-ple, to avoid being subject to such pressure, Ameri-can Airlines offers free access to its Admiral’s Clubto premium passengers, frequent fliers, and custom-ers with a Klout score of 55 and above.

5. Further reading

Given the significant role Wikipedia plays for con-sumers and companies alike, a natural question thatarises is ‘‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes’’ or ‘‘Whowatches the watchmen?’’ If content posted onWikipedia becomes de facto truth, how can we



ensure that only truth is posted on Wikipedia? Forany academic, the natural answer to this questionwould be to introduce peer review, a system underwhich every Wikipedia entry would be evaluated bya certain number of experts who could raise poten-tial concerns that authors would need to addressbefore publication. Although peer review comeswith its own set of problems–—for example, highlyinnovative ideas that go against current beliefs aremore likely to get rejected–—it is still considered thegold standard in most academic fields. Applying peerreview to collaborative projects is, however, likelyto result in failure, as illustrated by Nupedia, thepredecessor of Wikipedia.

Nupedia, which lasted from March 2000 toSeptember 2003, was essentially a peer-reviewedversion of Wikipedia. First, each potential contrib-utor was pre-screened by an area editor to testwhether she/he was qualified to write an article.In most cases this implied having a PhD or equivalentin the respective area. Second, once the article waswritten a reviewer evaluated it and, in the case of apositive outcome, the article was opened up to thepublic for additional review. After all potentialchanges had been made, the third step consistedof copyediting the final article, first by a profession-al copyeditor, then by the public, and finally by thecopyeditor again. Upon approval by the area editor,the article was published on Nupedia and the authorreceived either a T-shirt or a coffee mug as a tokenof appreciation.

While this process appeared good on paper, itcomes as no surprise that it was extremely timeconsuming. Hence, 18 months after its debut andwith expenditures reaching US $250,000, Nupediacontained only 12 articles. The two founders ofNupedia, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, thereforechanged their process completely and founded Wi-kipedia. Since the latter featured approximately1,000 articles after just 1 month of operation,Nupedia was shut down and contained 24 articlesupon its closing. While peer review can be themethod of choice in matters of life and death, suchas FDA new drug testing, in most instances the risk ofwrong information is far less severe than the risk ofbeing outdated or incomplete.

Another element influencing accuracy of infor-mation is the type and amount of people contribut-ing to the collaborative project. As previouslyoutlined, having a sufficiently large and heteroge-neous group of contributors is essential to ensuringaccurate information. Yet entering Wikipedia as anew contributor can be challenging since estab-lished contributors tend to be suspicious regardingchanges made by newcomers and might reversethem in response. This prompts a vicious circle:

to be considered a reputable contributor one needsa sufficient number of contributions, but to be ableto contribute one needs to be considered reputable.To solve this problem, Wikipedia is currently consid-ering whether to introduce a ranking system similarto that used by eBay, which would facilitatereputation-building in a different way.

Despite all its positive aspects, Wikipedia is notbeyond criticism. Larry Sanger, one of its two co-founders, distanced himself from Wikipedia in 2002due to the site’s lack of public perception of credi-bility–—particularly in areas of detail–—and the dom-inance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers.Some managers and public relations experts wouldprobably agree with his concern. By allowing anyoneto post content on Wikipedia, the door is open to thecreation of untruths and strategic manipulation.Ironically, this mirrors the attitude of 16th centuryDominican friar Filippo di Strata, who criticized Jo-hannes Gutenberg and his printing press for allowingthe diffusion of knowledge without prior verificationby monks, who previously copied books by hand:‘‘The pen is a virgin; the printing press, a whore.’’Yet, as we know today, di Strata was not able to stopthe global spread of this tool and the associatedprinting revolution. Some trends are just too power-ful to reverse; instead of investing effort in vain,companies are better advised to accept the facts anduse collaborative projects to their advantage.

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