It’s all passed in a blur of new features being added, people signing up, improvements being made and a large amount of contributions to the information on the site, but believe it or not Bizwiki has now been live to the public for six months.

And what an eventful six months they have been, too.

We have continuously been impressed with the quality of information that has been added by the general public. Yes, there has been the occasional piece of ‘self-promotion’ or advertising-copy masquerading as a review, but that’s par for the course on the modern internet and most of these have been removed within hours. What is far more impressive is the amount of businesses that have been added, contributions submitted and genuine reviews we have received from people who are trying to help improve the quality of information available for others.

Since beta launch Bizwiki has been swamped with submissions. It’s great! A big thank you to everyone who submitted new listings, changes and updates. We’re working through them as quickly as we can.

Please note that Bizwiki is a directory for UK companies, organisations, associations and clubs, and not a website directory.

That means that we’re more than happy to include the main website of any UK company, but not websites on their own. In fact you can add up to 5 brand or product website addresses in the External Links section of a business record.

The online news has been buzzing with the story of a US college student’s “Wikipedia Scanner” as reported in Wired, BBC and numerous other places.

No wonder it’s getting attention. The tool lets you see who is really editing Wikipedia pages, and shows clearly what many in the web community have known or suspected for some time – in addition to the outright and very obvious problems of spam and articles being defaced, Wikipedia’s open editing policies have also allowed company owners and corporate as well as government spin-doctors to quietly remove any references they don’t want published and ever so softly insert their own versions.

Why include reviews?

Bizwiki is dedicated to collecting and publishing business information rather than opinion, and the question of whether to include review functionality at all was debated early on in the project.

Our conclusion was that in some cases our visitors will want to know other peoples’ experiences with a business more than anything else, so we decided to add reviews as an alternative place for users to share opinions that would otherwise inevitably filter through into the business information.

After all, you can’t give users the right to edit the pages of a site and not expect them to want to express their views and opinions!

In answer to one of the frequent questions we have received during the process of building and planning the site, Bizwiki is planned to grow into an international directory of business.

We are starting with businesses in the United Kingdom, where most of our staff are based, but obviously the UK is not the only country that could benefit from an open directory for businesses. Versions of Bizwiki are planned for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand over the next year.

Bizwiki is now live to the public as a beta! A lot of work remains to be done, and the team is feverishly slaving away on the full version of the site, but in the meantime we’ve opened it up for people to have a look around. Please feel free to sign up, look around, try it out and comment on absolutely anything! If you come across a serious error or problem on the site, feel free to report it.

I think the best description of the technical team behind Bizwiki is ‘Nervously Proud’. Imagine a new father outside a maternity ward, waiting to hear whether all the fingers and toes arrived with the main package, and you probably have it in a nutshell.

But most importantly, welcome to the Bizwiki Beta, a taste of what’s to come in the world of online business!

This is the first post, so perhaps the best start would be to offer an introduction. This is the official blog for Bizwiki, a user edited site for businesses, companies and organisations that we hope will grow into one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive business directories on the web.

That is quite a challenge, and in order to accomplish it we are inviting users, business owners, company managers, consumers, clients and customers to get involved and increase the information available for everyone to use.