Centiare is a directory which is shaped like a wiki but doesn’t quite behave like one. It is powered by MediaWiki, the same collaboration and editing software that is used by Wikipedia and a host of other wikis. Yet Centiare chooses not to utilize some of the collaboration possibilities: When you have set up a directory page, only you can edit it.

Wiki but not a wiki
You can set up directory pages about yourself or your business, and no other users can edit it. These “user-owned” listings can be commercial, non-profit, government or personal. The listings are not intended to be neutral or objective — you are encouraged to express what the people at Centiare call an advocate points-of-view and include links to your products, artwork, blogs etc.

So by most definitions, this directory part of Centiare is not a wiki. It is an interesting new kind of directory, though, but we foresee a lot of problems. The fact that anyone can write about any company, and not only their own, is bound to cause conflict, even if companies that can prove that they are the “rightful owners” of the company listed, may ask to get editorial control of the relevant article.

At the moment Centiare has some 3000 pages, and many of them are virtually empty. Centaire might start growing quickly, though, if their promise to SEOs delivers:

Search engine optimization
The directory claims that it facilitates search engine optimization (SEO) in several ways. According to the founders content created in Centiare has a way of showing up toward the top of search engine results. This is due partly to a combination of relevance and linkage, they say. We find it very doubtful that Centiare pages should perform any better than other pages per se. The examples given are for rather narrow search phrases, and do not in any way prove the SEO benefits of the concept.

We don’t to see why these articles should perform any better than the companies’ own web sites, or for that matter why companies should spend time writing articles about themselves on Centiare, when the main generator of traffic will continue to be search engine traffic to their own web sites, and not Centiare.

That being said, content rich quality pages included in Centiare that manage to get a sufficient number of related inbound links, may very well succeed SEO-wise. And you are free to monetize your listings through Google AdSense.

The ‘pedia part
In addition to allowing companies and persons to write articles about themselves, users may also write more traditional encyclopedia entries and topic articles. These are not owned by the author, so anyone can edit them. We fail to see how this system adds value to the one already used by Wikipedia. After all, one of the benefits of writing for the Centiare directory is that no one else can come in and “ruin” your text.

Improved search
Wikipedia is famous for its lousy site search. Centiare is working to fix this. They have modified the MediaWiki software to perform multi-level searches like “Home heating oil company, at least 50 years in business, in New Jersey”. This is possible because Centiare uses semantic tagging to organize, search, and report on information.

Navigation
It’s a good thing they offer improved search, because navigating the site is not for the fainthearted. You can access the directory content through the directory portals. These portals are based on the 2002 North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) sectors. This is a complicated six digit structure with 20 primary sectors. So far just a few businesses have tagged their entries with NAICS codes.

There is an A to Z index. This page contains a large and confusing template. There is an option to browse by category, but at this time the categories page is empty. It is possible that navigation will improve as the categories and template spaces fill with articles, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It should be a priority for any directory to build intuitive navigation. It doesn’t matter that it’s clever or even innovative if the users lose their way.

Community aspects
The Centiare people have made additions to the MediaWiki software to develop the community aspects of the site.

With these extensions you can plug in YouTube videos within a page, promote your resume, your products and more, list your “friends” within Centiare by showing who has tagged you as a friend, and upload not only pictures, but also documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, and more.

What’s ahead for Centiare?
We will be interested to see how Centiare develops. Without the self policing mechanisms of a wiki community, how will they keep the entries relevant and guard against spam?

And how will the combination of business directory and Web 2.0 style community work out? Centaire has none of the glossy web design and smooth interaction that the successful social networking sites have. Although I get a tingling sensation hearing about semantic tagging, I am not convinced this is a great selling point outside of geek circles, and I doubt that writers will add tags to the extent Centiare hopes for. Centiare will have to focus on the directory or invest some serious money to polish the design and the interaction.

To learn more, have a look at Centiare’s tutorial.