Wikia in the news

This pages details mentions of Wikicities in the media. This does not include mentions in blogs. See also press releases and presentations about Wikicities.

March 2005
Wikicites got a lengthy write up in the March 2005 edition of Wired magazine. The article, by Daniel Pink, was called "The Book Stops Here" and focused primarily on Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales' past, but Wikicites got a 270 word mention. The full article will be available on the Wired.com website in future. The following extract is from page 136 of the magazine.


 * Late last year, Wales and Angela Beesley, an astonishly dedicated Wikipedian, launched a for-profit venture called WikiCities. The company will provide free hosting for "community-based" sites - RVers, poodle owners, genealogy buffs, and so on. The sites will operate on the same software that powers Wikipedia, and the content will be available under a free license. But WikiCities intends to make money by selling advertising. After all, if several thousand people can create an encyclopedia, a few hundred Usher devotees should be able to put together the ultimate fan site. And if legions of Usher fans are hanging out in one place, some advertiser will pay to try to sell them concert tickets or music downloads.


 * It may feel like we've been down this road before - remember GeoCites and theglobe.com? But Wales says this is different because those earlier sites lacked any mechanism for true community. "It was just free homepages," he says. WikiCities, he believes, will let people who share a passion also share a project. They'll be able to design and build projects together.

February 2005
Wikicities' first press release is published by PRWeb:
 * Wikia announced today the creation of the one hundredth wiki at Wikicities.

MacWorld reports on the WikiMac Wikicity, and quote David Feng saying "We're ready for prime time":
 * The Wiki Information Project for Mac users is described as a, "new Mac knowledge community...'

December 2004
Wikicities is mentioned in the press for the first time. An article about Extreme Blogging at forbes.com says:
 * So Wales has recently started two for-profit wiki companies. The first, Wikicities, lets users develop collaborative communities around cities, schools or other interests, such as sports teams, celebrities, etc. This is similar to Yahoo Groups (formerly Geocities), MSN Groups and the new Google Groups. Like Yahoo's Groups, Wikicities' revenue model is purely ad-based.