Yellowikis

Yellowikis
Type of site
 MediaWiki
Owner Wikia
Website yellowikis.wikia.com
Registration Optional
Launched January 2005
Current status Inactive

Yellowikis was a MediaWiki website collecting basic information about businesses. This information included basic contact details such as company name, address, websites, and telephone numbers, as well as internal Yellowiki wikilinks to competitors. Yellowikis was launched in January 2005. As of October 2018, the Yellowikis main page had been translated into more than 25 different languages.

Some users also entered a number of codes including a two letter country code, as well as an International Standard Industrial Classification, North American Industry Classification or US Standard Industrial Classification. Some users are also adding geocodes and Skype ids.

A commercial business listing company, Yell Limited, requested that the founders of Yellowikis, Paul Youlten and Rosa Blaus, amend their site, claiming that Yellowikis was "passing itself off" as being associated with Yell.com and that people would confuse the two organisations.[1][2][3] This was in July 2006.

This might be considered to be anti competitive behaviour/anti competitive in the eyes of certain commentators, however, such claim is unlikely to carry water from a legal perspective.

Yell's claim is given considerable weight by the slogan on Yellowiki's front page that they are "Yellow Pages for the 21st Century" although in their public protestations, Yellowikis claim that they are not trying to create association between themselves and Yellow Pages.[4] Yellow Pages is a registered trade mark in many countries including the United Kingdom.

In some territories, however, the mark has lost its distinctiveness as a source of origin of goods and services. From 9 to 14 October 2006, the domain address redirected to the new Owikis website, which stated "The trademark dispute between Yell Limited and Paul Youlten concerning the Yellowikis website has been satisfactorily resolved".

On 15 October 2006, the Yellowikis website reappeared, with the explanation that United Kingdom users would have to use Owikis, with the word Yell from the domain name and the color yellow from the logo; international users could continue to use Yellowikis. As of October 2018, the Owikis site is not yet available. As of October 2018, the Wikia page is dead.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "Legal threat to wiki listing site". BBC News. 12 July 2006. Retrieved 2006-07-12.
  2. ↑ Bobbie Johnson (2006-08-02). "Teenager faces action over listings website". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Ltd.
  3. ↑ Jane Hoskyn (2006-07-14). "Yell threatens to sue wiki rival". vnunet.com. VNU Business Publications Ltd. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30.
  4. ↑ The Yellowikis Community (2006). "Response to Yell". Yellowikis. Retrieved 2006-07-14.
  5. ↑ "Web Archive". Archived from the original on January 9, 2014. Retrieved 2014-05-28.

Further reading

  • "Business Information in Wiki Format". ResearchBuzz. 2005-06-22.
  • "Yellowikis". Competia. 2005-07-26.
  • "A wiki worth watching". totalitarianism today. Retrieved 2005-10-07.
  • S.Tabani. "Why I think Yellowikis is a good idea". site spotlight. Retrieved 2006-01-16.
  • Emily Chang "Emily Chang's eHub". eHub. Retrieved 2005-10-09.
  • Richard MacManus (2005-10-15). "Yellowikis – A Case Study of a Web 2.0 Business, Part 1".
  • Richard MacManus (2005-10-16). "Yellowikis: a Web 2.0 Case Study, Part 2 – Industry Disruption and The Competition".
  • Richard MacManus (2005-10-17). "Yellowikis: Demonstrating Web 2.0 principles".
  • Marks, Kathy (2006-06-26). "New Media: Who are the real winners now we've all gone Wiki-crazy?". London: The Independent.
  • Yell threatens to shut down Yellowikis from Wikinews, 2006-07-05
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