Web 2.0 Growing Pains

I've spent a fair amount of time today looking for a new Wiki to use for our documentation project. I need a Wiki tool that's:

a) WYSIWYG
b) hosted
c) ONLY accessible by invited users

Using the WikiMatrix comparison website, I discovered WetPaint. I was literally jumping up & down thinking that all my prayers had been answered.

Wetpaint is ridiculously easy to setup and start using. Pages can be added & edited easily by my non-techie business partner and I love how simple it is to add links to other pages. Not a single line of markup is needed and formatting is kept even when copying & pasting documents from MS Word.

Before I set up a Wetpaint account I googled 'Techcrunch Wetpaint' to see if Mike Arrington has said anything about it yet. It emerged that Trinity Ventures put some Venture Capital into Wetpaint, so I knew it had to be decent. (I once spoke to Trinity Ventures' Ajay Chopra, one of the more approachable VCs out there. Give him a shout if you're looking for VC!)

As I went through the fantastically slick signup process, I kept thinking how Trinity Ventures made a darn good call on investing in Wetpaint and how Yahoo must simply be itching to buy Wetpaint, particularly now that Google has picked up Wetpaint competitor Jotspot.

But then I discovered the Achilles heel... Anyone can view our Wetpaint Wiki. Our documentation is confidential and I only want invited users to have access. I got that horrible 'i knew it was too good to be true' feeling.

It's really sad when Web 2.0 startups do so many things just right and then stuff up monumentally on something so trivial.