TechWag

: Image via CrunchBase

WetPaint, a local Seattle DIY Wiki Company has hit 8 million unique visitors per month putting them firmly on the growth curve and survival curve.

Add to that a ton of new support for the things that people want to use the web site for; WetPaint should continue to do well, even with a recession on. While people will get free Wiki’s, they also get Google Ads on those pages, so WetPaint has a way to monetize their site, make a little money, and continue to be able to meet the bills and grow. From their PR release they are adding:

Video Galleries: Wetpaint users have always been able to easily embed YouTube videos in their sites, but now they can collect and organize them in a centrally located Video Gallery. To make sure the best videos are bubbled up for the entire community, videos can be ‘featured’ and related videos easily discovered.

Enhanced Discussion Forums: The latest round of enhancements to the Wetpaint Discussion Forum feature encourage chatterboxes to feature, lock, and edit any of their own posts to keep the conversation on track.

Premium Upgrades: Private groups or small businesses and non-profits looking for an easy way to create a social presence online can now upgrade their Wetpaint site for $19.95 per month to get an ad-free experience. More premium services and features will be added soon.

Layout Controls: With Wetpaint, page layout possibilities are endless when you’re a whiz with WYSIWYG tables, but if you just want a quick way to create a two-column layout, click the new layout zone button on the toolbar.

New Content Modules: Make your Wetpaint site come to life by surfacing the latest activity across the site with two new content modules, one that features the best discussions and the other showcasing the most active contributors from your Wetpaint community.

New Wetpaint Droplets: Take your Wetpaint site wherever you go online, including Facebook and MySpace.

Probably the most intriguing process is the Droplets feature, by allowing people to embed things into their Facebook and/or MySpace accounts, they are also tapping those audiences. Social Networking interoperability is a good thing, and while we might argue over walled gardens, it is systems like droplets that will help break them down. As long as users and their widgets are not banned by Facebook or MySpace, then this will add an additional avenue for more growth in the future. With Facebook growing by leaps and bounds, adding the ability to tap those audiences is a smart move on the part of WetPaint.

Nice growth curve, if you look back at what Techcrunch was reporting in May of 2008 with 3 million unique visitors then, going to 6 million now that is a 100% growth increase in 9 months. Not bad, not bad at all.