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Wikirank: A Zeitgeist for Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the most significant sites on the web. It produces vast quantities of data and the Wikimedia foundation tries to make all of it available to the public. Wikipedia's traffic data can be an insight into what's interesting on the web. Wikirank, currently in closed beta, shares that information very cleanly. On its homepage Wikirank shows which Wikipedia articles are the most read and which pages are gaining in popularity. Additionally, you can find each article's detail page via search. On the detail page you can find and article excerpt, traffic numbers and a (soon-to-be-embeddable) traffic chart that allow you to compare traffic with other topics (up to four). Wikirank (@wikirank) was produced by Small Batch Inc.. The design was done by Jeff Veen, most lately of Google Analytics and previously of Measure Map and Adaptive Path. Update: In a comment Veen said: Second, the UI wasn't designed just by me, but was a group effort that included the rest of Small Batch's cofounders: Bryan Mason, Greg Veen and Ryan Carver. We also were fortunate enough to work with the very talented Dan Cederholm from Simplebits. In an email, Veen told me that the charts were built without Flash. It's all Javascript using the HTML Canvas element . The data is being processed in EC2 and stored on S3. Tokyo Cabinet is being used to manage the data store.
Wikirank is a testament to good, clean design and the power of existing web tools. It's the first project from Small Batch, but it won't be the last. I expect that their other projects will also focus on data visualization Jeff Veen will be keynoting at the Web 2.0 Expo SF on 4/3 and speaking at Ignite SF on 4/1.
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Comments: 9
John (Human3rror) [19 March 2009 06:27 AM]
this is very neat.
Jeffrey Veen [19 March 2009 09:21 AM]
Thanks for the post, Brady. I wanted to add a couple more details about Wikirank.
First, we're pretty close to being out of beta, very likely in the next week or so.
Second, the UI wasn't designed just by me, but was a group effort that included the rest of Small Batch's cofounders: Bryan Mason, Greg Veen and Ryan Carver. We also were fortunate enough to work with the very talented Dan Cederholm from Simplebits.
ed chi [19 March 2009 04:31 PM]
Folks who are interested in wikirank might also be interested in the tool we developed called WikiDashboard (http://wikidashboard.parc.com/
It does an article/user analysis and visualization on the social dynamics around a topic/user.
Sérgio Nunes [21 March 2009 03:37 AM]
Looking forward to test Wikirank. Looks great.
You might be interested in a tool called WikiChanges that I developed a couple of months ago. Plots are based on the complete revision history of Wikipedia articles.
A simple example.
http://sergionunes.com/p/wikichanges/?q=Twitter&q2=Facebook
H.K. [22 March 2009 03:29 PM]
Wikipedia is a major component of the user built web. Wikirank seems like a natural tool. This* site is like a mini wiki of digital security that I thought was very useful.
Money Ideas [16 April 2009 01:10 PM]
Seems like a great tool.
Luke Metcalfe [18 July 2010 09:17 PM]
The Full Wiki does the same thing, with sparklines tracking the popularity of each topic. Though it also uses Wikipedia's categories to turn the data into 13,000 What's Hot lists for the web. A nicer way to browse Wikipedia's categories.
chonburi [13 January 2011 11:47 PM]
Wikipedia is a major component of the user built web. Wikirank seems like a natural tool. This* site is like a mini wiki of digital security that I thought was very useful.
Cindy [21 September 2011 08:37 PM]
That's an interesting read on wikirank. To be honest, I haven't heard about it before. Seems like it's a great tool when used side by side with the Google trends.