During my presentation at last week's 2007 CIO & Digital Library Forum, I made the point that wiki use in education, unlike blogs, is not entirely ready for prime time. Educators who use it are pioneers (or early-adopters, in marketing-speak). That's not to say that wikis shouldn't be used. Just don't expect people to jump right in and use it.

That's a reminder to myself that I can get overenthusiastic about these tools, not realising that many people have yet to become familiar with them. Lee LeFever of the Common Craft Blog, who has an excellent video primer on wikis, points out some results of a survey on social media tools:

16% of the US online population is familiar with what a wiki is. Even if you just look at the online trendsetters (18-34 year olds), only 27% of those online users are familiar with wikis.

Blogs, which have universal awareness among nearly anyone reading this post, are only familiar to 35% of online users. And familiarity with social networks as a category still ranks below that of online forums at 28% and 35% respectfully.

For context, consider that 76% of the same population know of search engines and 97% of toilet paper.

Although this is a US-based survey, I figure that numbers are similar here. Traditional media can report about blogs and wikis but the general public is still unfamiliar with these, particularly the latter.