• by Karl Greenberg , February 11, 2008

General Motors' next leg of GM Next, its 2008 corporate centennial campaign, is a wiki, a public-access collaborative Web site: a Wikipedia devoted to GM history.

On Friday, GM launched its corporate history wiki, "Generations of GM," on GMNext.com. The Generations wiki lets people contribute first-person experiences relating to the company's centennial. The company says the wiki can include anything from "A story about a summer job in an assembly plant to pictures of a first car to favorite experiences with GM products." The company expects contributors to be employees, retirees, dealers and customers.

To add to the submissions, users have to register their e-mail on gmnext.com and click the "wiki" tab at the top of the page. From there they can post a picture, write a story or read what others have contributed. The wiki is being moderated per rules, or "Rules of the Road," but accuracy is overseen by the user community and subject matter experts.

The wiki will be based on a timeline of basic facts about GM's history from its incorporation to the present. The wiki can include links to stories, images, videos and audio.

GM spokesperson Scot Keller says the project will be promoted via digital outreach as part of GM Next. "We are focusing not just on bringing eyeballs to our site, but actively participating in and distributing content to other social-networking and traditional Web sites," he says. The company, which launched the program a month ago, has been pitching it internally and to retirees. "It is heavily promoted on our site and is part of our postering and point-of-sale materials [for events and dealers]."

He says the company will sift contributions--text, audio, or video--to use in Web promotions for GM Next. "We think the content being generated on-site could be really compelling in different ways; if someone does post for the wiki and it gets a lot of traction, we might invite them back to participate in a blog or interviews, live events and so on."

The company had originally considered creating a traditional book on GM's history. "We felt that a more social, more inclusive approach was appropriate, and the story was best told not by the corporation or media but by men and women who were there," says Keller.

Keller says the company won't "censor" the wiki beyond obscenity and ad hominen attacks, not factual accuracy or opinion. "Inherent in the wiki approach is that the community is able to edit and add additional comments. If someone comes in and posts an inaccuracy you would look to participants--either subject matter experts or the general community to correct the inaccuracy, with that correction going into record for viewers to see."