SocialText lands Series B

After a fairly news-free period in the world of wikis, there is something potentially big: SocialText raised their second round of funding. See Ross' tease here. Congratulations to the SocialText guys — that's very good news, and a further validation of the whole wiki market. I still think it's going to be huge.

Ross won't reveal any of the key details until the end of May, but he's turned it into a kind of game. The first person to guess (and blog) the actual details of the round prior to the official announcement wins five licenses of SocialText.net for a year. I've no time to research this now, but I'll see what I can come up after the big party this weekend.

I do have a few initial impressions, though. Of course, the first question on everyone's mind is, "how much?" (The who could be equally important, but face it — everyone starts with the amount.) Relevant history: SocialText closed an Angel round ($300k) in June of 2003 and it's A round ($500k) in August 2004. JotSpot raised $5.2mm in October 2004. None of the other wiki makers are venture-funded, as far as I know.

The JotSpot round is an interesting comparison, but I'm leery of using it as benchmark for SocialText's valuation. A couple things could have inflated the JotSpot number: first, the reputation of Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer as the founders of Excite undoubtedly pushed their valuation up. And secondly, Kraus and Spencer were themselves investors in the round and (as far as I can tell from the press release) their investment is included in that $5.2mm. So it's not exactly a level playing field on which to compare.

Anyway, I'm not prepared to hazard a firm guess yet. I don't think it's going to be game-changing. But hopefully it'll give SocialText more breathing room than their last round did. I'll give it some more thought and research over the weekend.