Wikia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Wikia, Inc. | |
 |
|
| Type of Company | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters |  San Mateo, California, USA |
| Key people | Jimmy Wales Gil Penchina Angela Beesley |
| Products | Wikia |
| Revenue | N/A |
| Employees | 16 |
| Slogan | Creating Communities |
| Website | www.wikia-inc.com |
Wikia is a selective wiki hosting service (or wiki farm) founded in 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley under the name Wikicities. Wikia particularly targets communities, both those established offline and those with a purely online following. It is free of charge for readers and editors.
Wikia covers a broad range of topics; most widely-scoped community projects are accepted, with the exception of ideas that compete with the Wikimedia projects, which the Wikia founders are heavily involved in. Wikia requires all content to be licensed under one of many free content licences, such as Creative Commons or the GNU Free Documentation License. Wikia also has some crossover with Wikipedia, with the communities of Wikia being linked on the relevant Wikipedia article in many cases.
Wikia uses MediaWiki software on Linux servers, and claims to provide both technical and social support for all aspects of running a wiki community.[1] The project announced the creation of its one hundredth wiki on February 3, 2005.[2] As of August 2006, it had over 1,500 wikis in 48 languages,[3] and its Alexa traffic ranking was around 3000,[4] (Uncyclopedia and Memory Alpha, two of their most popular wikis, are not included in this figure).
Wikia changed its name from Wikicities on March 27, 2006 to prevent confusion; some had mistakenly thought that Wikicities provided city guides.[5] Following this change, Wikia announced that it had received US$4 million in venture capital from Bessemer Venture Partners.[6]
Wikiasari (previously called Wikia) was an earlier project run by Wales that attempted to create a copyleft search engine.
[edit] Company
Wikia, Inc. is a company based in San Mateo, California, USA.[7] The company was originally incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on 10 January 2006. Angela Beesley has served since the beginning as Wikia's Vice-President of Community Relations,[8] while Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, was hired as CEO on June 5, 2006. Gil had previously been one of a group of angel investors in the company.[9][8] Michael E. Davis, a former business partner of Wales, who now serves as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board and that organization's Treasurer, was named Treasurer and Secretary of Wikia in January 2006.
Wikia has some technical staff in the USA, but also opened an office in Poznań, Poland in 2006. Explaining his choice of location, Wales commented "It's about reasonable salaries and high quality. You can find cheaper programmers in other parts of the world, but the quality's not there."[3]
[edit] Active Wikia sites
As of 28 October 2006, the most active Wikia-hosted sites by active contributor count were:[10]
- Uncyclopedia* (home), a satirical parody of Wikipedia, in over 20 languages
- Wookieepedia (home), a Star Wars Wiki, along with a non-canon Star Wars fanon wiki (home) and SW1ki (home), a Star Wars MUSH database
- Memory Alpha* (home), a reference to the Star Trek series, and its non-canon partner (home)
- Wikiality, an "internets tube dedicated to truthiness" (and Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report in general)
- WikiFur (home), an encyclopedia of furry fandom
- Dofus (home), a wiki dedicated to the MMORPG-like tactical game of the same name
- 香港網絡大典 (home), an encyclopedia of virtual communities in Hong Kong
- Cyber Nations Wiki (home), a wiki for players of the nation simulation game Cyber Nations
- Muppet Wiki (home), a database on the works of Jim Henson, particularly The Muppets
- Teletraan-1 (home), a fan-maintained database of Transformers knowledge
- RuneScape Wiki (home), a encyclopedia for the MMORPG RuneScape
* Note: Uncyclopedia and Memory Alpha were founded separately, and are hosted by Wikia (in a variety of languages) under Creative Commons licenses.
[edit] References
- ^ Wikia, Inc.. Why use Wikia?. Retrieved on 2006-10-28.
- ^ Beesley, Angela et. al. (February 3, 2005). 100 Wikicities. Retrieved on October 15, 2006.
- ^ a b Shannon, Victoria (28 September, 2006). Wikipedia Founder Staffs For Profit Wikia Spinoff. International Herald Tribune. Retrieved on 2006-10-28.
- ^ Alexa. Related info for wikia.com. Retrieved on 2006-10-28.
- ^ Beesley, Angela (March 27, 2006). Wikicities relaunches as Wikia. Wikia. Retrieved on July 15, 2006.
- ^ Hinman, Michael (March 10, 2006). Venture capitalists invest wiki-millions. Tampa Bay Business Journal. Retrieved on March 10, 2006.
- ^ Wikia, Inc.. Wikia, Inc.. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ a b Wikia, Inc.. Bessemer Venture Partners Funds Jimmy Wales' Startup Wikia. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
- ^ Wikia taps eBay exec as CEO. San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved on June 5, 2006.
- ^ Wikia Statistics: Active wikians. Retrieved on 2006-09-01.
- ^ McCarthy , Caroline (2006). Wikipedia founder launches political site. News.com. CNET. Retrieved on 2006-12-05.
[edit] Further reading
- Wikia
- Wikia, Inc.
- Co-founder Angela Beesley on Wikia brief video interview (18 MB)
- List of Wikis
[edit] News reports
- From Wikipedia's Creator, A New Site for Anyone, Anything — Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2005
- Global Villages Convene in wiki town halls — St. Petersburg Times, April 4, 2005
- For-profit wiki - Marketplace (radio program) August 30, 2006
