I’m happy to announce the launch of Miki (www.themiki.com)— the world’s first social micro encyclopedia — a new Twitter-like encyclopedic service that unlike Wiki enable everyone to find, learn and share simple definitions and knowledge in easy and modern way in a form of ‘mikis’ — microposts limited to ~200 characters (like tweets). The name Miki is a portmanteau of micro and wiki.
Feel free to signup and start searching and posting mikis now at themiki.com/accounts/signup .
Our initial knowledge base (powered by WordNet) consist of ~10'000 concepts — English words of basic, academic and time family, including their hypernyms, word type, definitions and examples. We will also gradually upload various high-quality dictionaries and encyclopedias in the near future, though we are a community-based resource by nature and our content and quality mostly depends on our erudite users.
Even if Miki has no strict rules (unlike Wiki), there are several general guidelines and principles each user must follow:
1) be 18 y.o. and older and use Miki only for educational purposes,
2) respect other users, authors and Miki itself and treat them as you would like others to treat yourself (including giving proper credits).
We already partnered with several leading technology providers (including AWS, Datastax and OctoberTech), and prominent advisors (including Mr. Saul Hansell and Jim Thompson), and currently looking to arrange partnerships with various higher education institutions. We are always welcome and grateful for any help and support along our way to organize the world’s knowledge in a modern way (or at least a good part of it).
How everything started
The idea of Miki came to me nearly one year ago…
after some time of discomfort that I personally experienced when was looking up for unknown words on the web. Honestly, I do it very often since I have a pretty bad memory (the result of an unpleasent brain injury I have had several years ago).
Usually my problem solving path was like: 1) googling > 2) opening corresponding wiki page > 3) visually parsing the huge chunk of formal text trying to understand the meaning . At that time I already was an active user and fan of Twitter (twitter.com) which helped me to find interesting and useful info and post things on the web in easy and convenient way, and also make a smooth transition from microblogging to blogging (though I’m still not good at it as you might notice☺).
At one moment I decided: “why not to leverage Twitter’s concept to address this constant annoying problem”.
So now Miki is following the “desire path” : 1) miking > 2) easily browsing down the range of definitions and explanations from top encyclopedias and dictionaries, including the ones provided by your family, friends/peers and trusted fellows.
So it will be like googling but not leaving the site…
We also want the user to leave asap, and we believe we can do it better for this particular use cases — it’s what we will specialize on after all (we’re not going to replace googling… well, only for this purpose).
Of course this approach has its own drawbacks, but as any other technology, though in this case it’s more appropriate however, since, from my own experience, most of the time we don’t need one extensive answer but the range of “140 characters or less”.
Vision
I think Twitter is one of the best digital inventions of 21st century which is still not fully realized its potential…
and Miki is hopefully going to prove that 140 characters microblogging model can be applied to address more important and more often encountered human problem like — finding and sharing definitions and knowledge. That’s why Wiki* is the Top 6 most popular website in the world while Twitter is [only] Top 10 (may vary a bit). But it became obsolete and non-effective in today’s social, mobile, personalized and decentralized world. If try to recall the last time when you had contributed to or created article on Wiki*… — it probably was very long time ago if ever took place. While Miki will let literally everyone to find, learn and share simple definitions and knowledge in easy, modern and natural way just like in real life.
In addition to that, as I hope and believe, when people will try to explain any complex things in 140 characters or less it will also improve their imagination and insight what in total can have a huge positive social impact on the entire world… with your support!
So, we wish you good miking! =)
Sincerely yours,
Atai and Miki team.
www.themiki.com
P.S. Twitter is a trademark of Twitter Inc. and Miki and I in no way connected to it — I’m just Twitter’s ordinary user and fan. By the way, follow me @ataikang and feel free to provide feedback and suggestions.
