Human beings lived together in different tribes in primitive society. Every tribe had a name according to its features. In the 21st century, people are living together in “tribs” on the Internet.Chinese use ke to describe groups of people. For example, people who like to blog are called bo ke; People who make flash videos are called shan ke.
A new emerging ke is wei ke, or ‘Witkey’ iEnglish. These people sell their ideas or knowledge – for a price. They also post rewards for the best proposals on the Internet.
What’s in a name
In July 2005, Liu Feng coined the name ‘Witkey’ to describe hiwebsite, witkey.com. “The name popped into my head after the idea,” Liu says. “The first name I came up with was ‘21 Brain,’ because the ability to generate ideas will be crucialhe 21st century.”“One day the word ‘Wi was haunting in my mind. It means ‘wisdom’ or ‘intelligence,’ which was what I wanted to express. However, what to put after ‘Wit’ was a problem. I tried ‘Wit Sky’ and ‘Wit Home,’ but I wasn’t satisfied untilopped into my head,” he says.“The word ‘keyword’ is familiar to programmers, so I stuck ‘key’ after ‘wit’. Therefore, it has two meanings. First, it’s the key to wisdom; secondly, wisdom is a keyword for the 21sy.” After the word was coined, other websites that trade ideas adopted the name ‘witkey.’ For example, zhubajie.com.chas announced plans to build China’s most reliable witkey platform, and taskcn.com has name its registered users as witkeys.
Successful trading cases
Most people post requests like asking other to design a logo, name a baby or name a company, although Liu says logo design wasn’t in his original plans.“It can affect thebusiness of design companies, because a logo could be sold this way for less than 500 yuan,” he says.On his website, he gave a list of successful trades, including design of logos, the most touching things that happen in life and a plan for a birthday party.
A mobile phone BBS needed a logo and icons for buttons and bid 500 yuan for a series of designs. In the end, they chose rabbit324 (a witkey’s user’s name) designAnother witkey, a mother of a two-year-old baby, posted a task to ask how to teach Chinese babies to speak fluent English and bid 50 yuan for the best ideas. She chose four witkeys among as many as 500 answers, each one a witkey’s personal experience
The birth of the idea
Liu is still working to improve his website and his idea. When asked how he came up with the idea for Witkey, he says he’d almost forgotten the whole suffering exprience.
His undergrad degree is in computer science. “We always defined the Internet as a link between computers, cell phones, M3s and other machine terminals. Actually the terminal of the Internet is the brain of human beings,” he says.In June 2005, Liu got an idea to design a platform to trade knowledge, experience, skills and wisdom. “I’m Internet worm. If I have any questions, I’d like to ask other netizens in BBSs. Unfortunatey, I rarely got perfect answers,” he says
“Part of the reason is some netizens didn’t like to answer questions. I know I don’t usually reply to questions on a BBS. It really takes time and effort,” he says“To get the nformation, you need to pay for it. More and more people agree on that.” Under the direction of his supervisor, he devoted his summer vacation to writing the program that would become Witkey. He worked almost 12 hours a day.
In July 2005, he posted an article about his model on the Chinese Academy of Science’s BBS. “Witkey is a kind of information that is a crucial on the Internet. It is the people’s answers to the quions from their own knowledge, skills and experiences,” he wrote.After he introduced his program to classmates in a lecture in September 2005, he put the idea on his blog for people to discuss.
As more and more people have accessed witkey.com, the website has become commercialized since last September.
“Ideas should be priced,” Liu says. It’s a cornerstone of his plan to help one human access multiple brains. “We usually answer questions in our spare time. With Witkey, our brains are linked through one platform,” he says. Liu compared the setup of Witkey to how computer work in tandem over a network.
There are more than 300,000 people registered on witkey.com, but “that figure doesn’t reveal the actual number of witkey in China, because some users have more than one ID
The future of witkey:
Witkey is still on trial, and Liu says it has a long way to go. “I’m still foced on the program and how to further develop Witkey,” he says. “We want to set up an ‘expert witkey,’ which would be very valuabl“I hope the fture of witkey is asking and answering more and more questions about science and technology. Witkey will be a way to gain knowledge and spread wisdom in the future,” he says.
