Wikia in the news

This pages details mentions of Wikia in the media. This does not include mentions in blogs. See also press releases and presentations about Wikia. Links have been added and may not have been present in the original news articles.


 * Please note that the text on this page is predominately fair use and is not for distribution under the GFDL.

March 2006
Our press release in March 2006 with news of our first round of funding and the name change from Wikicities to Wikia led to a lot of coverage, especially in blogs. This is a selection of that, and other news in March.


 * Tampa Bay Business Journal: "Venture capitalists invest wiki-millions" by Michael Hinman was a two page article, focusing on the investment side of the news, with some nice quotes from Jimmy:
 * "We've had a lot of interest from investors, and it was really a matter of sorting through the investors to be sure that people who are investing were people who were believers in our mission," said Wales, who operates Wikipedia and Wikia separately from his St. Petersburg offices.
 * "Everything we do is under free licensing, and everything is designed in a way to be compatible with the Wikipedia community. And to me, those are the community ideals that makes this whole thing so attractive," Wales said.
 * New York Times: "Wikia Takes In $4 Million in Funding" was a small section based on the Tampa Bay Business Journal article that appeared in the DealBook section of The New York Times, edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin.
 * CNET: "Wiki honcho follows the money" was a short mention on the Blogma section of CNET.
 * Techcrunch: "Wikia Raises $4 Million" by Michael Arrington on Techcrunch reported that "current traffic for Wikia is fairly non-existent", which he didn't explain was because the site had just been renamed from Wikicities.com. "Wikipedia founder goes commercial", an article by Frank Barnako that was published on investors.com and marketwatch.com, picked up on this, reporting that "Traffic to the site has been lackluster". However, the weekly Alexa rank of Wikicities.com was 5,596 at the time and the rating of Wikia.com jumped to a very healthy 4,188 as soon as Alexa noticed the updated name.
 * National Post: "Co-founder has learned to roll with the punches" by Mark Evans was an article in the Canadian National Post about Wikipedia in early March with a brief mention of Wikia:
 * In the wake of Wikipedia's success, [Jimmy Wales] has created a for-profit company called Wikia, which manages more than 900 Wiki communities. Wikia generates money through relevant-based advertising on these Web sites.
 * BusinessWeek: "Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Gets $4 million in Funding" is an article by Heather Green in the Blogspotting section of BusinessWeek online.
 * "Wikia" by new Board member Joi Ito.
 * "Wikia, Jimmy Wales' Startup" by David Cowan from Bessemer.
 * "コミュニティ構築サイト「Wikia」、著名投資家から400万ドルの資金調達" is a post on the Japanese "Internet-Watch site, with many details from the Wikia press release as well as additional details on some of the investors.
 * コミュニティ構築サイト「Wikia」、著名投資家から400万ドルの資金調達" by Kobayashi Masashi in a Japenese venture capital blog.
 * "Wikia - Crea comunidades de Wikis". Juan Diego Pole writes "En wikia podéis crear sites sobre cualquier tema, en cualquier idioma" on his Spanish blog.
 * "Wikicities raises $4mm Series A" by Atlassian developer Jonathan Nolen.
 * "Wikia - Build Your Own Wiki" is a slightly critical post by Pete Cashmore on his "Mashable" blog.
 * "Wikia Gets Funded, All Components For Local Content Are Coming Together" on the Clickety Clack: Online Ad Blog.
 * "Wiki Startup Raises $4MM Series A" on Alexander Muse's Texas VC blog.
 * "Jimmy Wales Reels in Some Cash" by Mark Evans who writes "The magic behind Wikia is scale. The more Wikis created ... the more the company's platform is leveraged."
 * "Il dono dell'economia" is a post in Italian by Vittorio Zambardino.
 * "Wikipedia Founder's Commercial Venture Wikia Raises $4 Million" in Paid Content.
 * "Wikicities becomes Wikia" with congratualtions from Ourmedia founder JD Lasica.
 * "Wikicities receives $4 million and relaunces as Wikia" - Angela revives her dead blog Wikisearch to announce the press release.
 * "Wikia Raises VC" was an early announcement from Ross Mayfield.
 * "Wikicities relaunches as Wikia" by Wikian Lou Cypher.
 * "Jimmy Wales launches Wikia" by Matt Craven on The Blog Herald.
 * "Wikicities Re-Launches As Wikia" by Robert J. Safuto on the Awakened Voice blog.
 * Wikizine, issue 18, by Walter and others reported the investment before the press release on a mailing list aimed mostly at Wikimedia editors.
 * "Wikia: Crea tu propio Wiki" on the collective Spanish Genbeta blog.
 * "Wikia obtiene 4 millones de dolares". Gurús Hucky writes on the Spanish GurusBlog "Sin duda los wikis son una herramienta fantástica para el desarrollo ágil de una comunidad" (Without a doubt wiki is a fantastic tool for the agile development of a community).
 * "Wikicities + Joi + JLevine = Wikia, Mark II" is a very nice writeup from Sj:
 * "Wikia has only been getting better this past year. If you've had a burning idea you want to turn into a wiki, think about hosting with them.  Unlike every other online community aggregator I've seen to date, they really understand the need for free licensing, the importance of linking projects together and avoiding redundancy, and the utility of guiding communities towards producing meaningful lasting bodies of content, not just short-term attention sinks."

Newsweek
On January 9, Benjamin Sutherland wrote an article on "The People's Encyclopedia", focusing on Wikipedia, which mentioned Wikicities:


 * "Wales has also established a separate, for-profit company called Wikicities in 2004, which provides a hosting service for themed Web sites on topics ranging from ancient coins to beer. Although Wikicities is also built by volunteers, it does carry advertising. Wales says Wiki purists don't seem to mind because the firm is not part of the Wikipedia Foundation, and its profit motive was made clear from the get-go. Wikicities donates much of its revenue to the Wikipedia Foundation."

MetroSantaCruz
"The SCUM Also Rises: The WikiSCUM indexes the history of Santa Cruz Underground Music" in the December 21 issue of the SantaCruzMetro.

FortWayne News-Sentinel
"The (mostly) wonderful world of Wikis" was an article in the FortWayne News-Sentinel by Ellen Lee that mentions Wikicities and Memory Alpha:


 * "[Wales] launched a for-profit, advertising-supported company called Wikia, which runs Wikicities. The site hosts wikis for free, allowing fans to make a wiki for their obsessions, from "Star Trek" to "Star Wars" to Shakira.


 * "Dan Carlson, co-founder of Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, turned to wiki technology after he found he couldn't keep up with the "Star Trek" database he had spent some 10 years creating. Launched on its own in late 2003, Memory Alpha became part of Wikicities several months ago." See the article for more from Dan.

OhmyNews
The Korean Citizen Journalism site OhmyNews reported on the "Wireless Cities ... Community Context" conference. It mistakenly said that Wikicities was a Wikimedia project, which it is not. This was corrected in the next part of the article.


 * "Started in 2004 it currently hosts around 600 wikis representing neighborhoods, parks, towns and cities, and provides a more local approach than Wikipedia."

The Age
"Quest for the universal Wiki" was a profile of Angela Beesley in the Australian newspaper The Age (repeated in the Syndey Morning Herard) which briefly mentioned Wikicities and part of Angela's role in it:


 * "[Angela is] co-founder of Wikicities, a project to develop online Wiki communities, and is vice-president of its parent company, Wikia. With an honours degree in human psychology from Aston University in Birmingham, England, Ms Beesley sees her role in the Wiki community as facilitator rather than a leader.


 * ""My role is helping people, both to learn how to create and develop their Wiki, and also to deal with conflicts they have with other editors," she says."

Siliconeer
Siliconeer, a magazine targetting the South Asian community living on the U.S. West Coast, published an article about the October Earthquake by Wikicitizen Sabahat Ashraf: After the Quake: The Web and Expatriate Support.


 * "For about six months, I have been working on a project called WikiPakistan (pakistan.wikicities.com), a “Pakistan Information Database” hosted on Wikicities... As I read the news about the quake, I realized that this was exactly the kind of situation that this project could address. I created a page on the site devoted to the quake. Then I sent an e-mail to several mailing lists I am on and to friends informing them and inviting them to contribute... Over the next few days, I fell into the routine of following what I could from mailing lists, e-mails being sent around, news sites, and the like and adding information to the wiki site. Very soon, others joined in—not least, people on the ground in Pakistan." See siliconeer.com for the full article.

Other media coverage related to the Pakistan wiki is listed at.

C-SPAN
Jimmy Wales was interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN, a United States cable television network on September 26, 2005. Watch the show or read the transcript. The mention of Wikicities occurs about 20 minutes into the program.


 * "And she and I founded a company, Wikicities which we're using the same technology but it's not about the technology really it's about the social structure and the social model of bringing people together and how to – how to build a community of thoughtful people who can do something good. You know there's lots of communities on the Internet that are not healthy, they're sort of argumentative, difficult environments. But we try to build a healthy, friendly environment and say, well, let's all work together to do something useful."


 * "And but the idea is there's lots of types of things people want to do that are perfectly valid that don't fit under the rubric of the non-profit educational mission. So, for example, we have – some of the early successful sites would be the, you know, we have a Star Wars site where people are documenting the entire history of the series and doing community pages to discuss, you know, the philosophy or the theories of what's going on in Star Wars."

Florida Trend
http://www.floridatrend.com/media/images/2005-09/current_coverSEPTEMBER05.jpg Along with a lot of brief mentions of Wikicities with the Wikimania-related press in August, the Florida Trend described Wikia and Wikimedia under a heading "The Wiki World" in part of an article on Wikimania, and went on to discuss Wikicities and Memory Alpha. The article was also the first public mention of possible funding for Wikicities. The story was by Cynthia Barnett and was the cover story of the September issue. An online copy of the article is at.


 * "The site, called Wikicities, lets users create "wikis" — sites edited collaboratively — around specific topics of interest. On Wikipedia, users can't just go and make a page about their hobby, their company or themselves. On Wikicities, they can — for free. And in contrast to Wikipedia, where content is supposed to reflect a rigorously neutral point of view, the Wikicities sites are free to reflect the perspectives of their organizers and participants."


 * "The biggest project on Wikicities so far is called Memory Alpha, "a collaborative project to create the most definitive, accurate and accessible encyclopedia and reference for everything related to 'Star Trek.' " Dedicated Trekkies who used to blog or chat on hundreds of different websites now are building one together. [...] Why won't Trekkies or others just band together outside the Wiki umbrella? For one, the sophisticated, high-quality Wiki software provides them with the bandwidth and editing platform they need to have the kind of collaborative effort they want."


 * "In addition, Wikipedia has become a powerful, attractive brand, says Joichi Ito, an internet leader in Japan and the CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny. Ito, who has helped Wales raise an initial $1 million for Wikicities, believes Wales has created enough consumer loyalty to make a for-profit Wiki model work. "Jimmy and Wikipedia are THE Wiki brand.""

GovTech
GovTech, a US Government Technology news site, reported on the BeyondVoting Wikicity on August 17, 2005 in an article called "NYC Community Board Member Discusses Wiki, Online Technology, For Local Governance". Tom Lowenhaupt was interviewed and said:
 * "At one level I initiated the wiki to discern ways to improve the website. But more fundamentally, I was looking for ways to improve the efficacy of community and the community board. People will only invest time in a governance website if there's impact, and as currently structured, the community boards have little impact."


 * "In a general sense, the BeyondVoting Wiki's role is to explore ways to better engage the public in the governance process. BeyondVoting uses the wiki's uncomplicated editing tools to create an open and transparent environment for participation in the governance process. Most optimistically, the wiki will magically transform a black hole into a magnet. We want people to see their ideas out there, making a difference."

Federal Computer Week
The BeyondVoting Wikicity was featured in an article called "Wikis find role in community governance" by Aliya Sternstein. The article was on fcw.com, the online version of Federal Computer Week, a magazine for government, business and technology news.


 * "''Some small governmental bodies have already created wikis. For example, a Queens, N.Y., community board member created BeyondVoting, a community governance wiki. Tom Lowenhaupt, the wiki's founder and a governance systems developer, said he hopes the wiki will help raise board members' awareness of community concerns. Lowenhaupt said he wants to apply the same technology to the city's charter revision process after he completes an evaluation of the BeyondVoting wiki."


 * "E-democracy experts, however, say the BeyondVoting wiki will need a focused purpose to be effective. Steven Clift, editor of the Democracies Online e-mail discussion list, said wikis 'really need to feed and foster a sense of direction.'" (see the article for more)

District Administration Magazine
Wikicities, and in particular, the High School Online Collaborative Writing Wikicity, was featured in an article in the June 2005 edition of District Administration. This magazine for education leaders apparently reaches "more than 72,000 top-level decision makers in virtually every school district in the United States". The article was "Affinity Groups and Wikicities: Interest groups are one of the Web's hottest trends" by Odvard Egil Dyrli, and can be seen online at districtadministration.com.


 * "Recently a new type of affinity group arrived on the Internet, following in the footsteps of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Known collectively as Wikicities, users create Wikicity pages on whatever interests them, and visitors can add to and edit the information they contain using tools included at each site. Wikicities offer powerful collaboration opportunities.


 * For example, Paul Allison, a teacher in the East Side Community High School in New York, founded the High School Online Collaborative Writing site as one of the first Wikicities for schools, to "build on what we already know about collaboration and language and take advantage of the unique features of this new media environment." So far, 10 other high schools in New York have joined the group. "Collecting student work online is a challenge, but well worth the effort," he says, "and I am enjoying the work of deepening computer literacy.""

Time Magazine
Wikicities got a brief mention at the end of an article on wikis in the June 6 edition of Time magazine. The article was called "It's a Wiki, Wiki World" and focused mainly on Wikipedia.

Here's an extract, from the third page of the online version which was posted on May 29. [links added]


 * ''Whatever happens to Wikipedia, the wiki genie is out of the bottle... Wales has a for-profit website, Wikicities, where anyone can form a community. (The two largest are geeking out on the chronologies of Star Wars and Star Trek.) "It's a form of brainstorming that's bigger than one person standing at a flip chart," says Cunningham. "And there's a timelessness to it. You can do a wiki over one year or 10."

St Petersburg Times
An article titled Global villages convene in wiki town halls in the St Petersburg Times on April 4th included an interview with St. Pete native Jimmy Wales:


 * Wikicities relies on the same formula of user collaboration that has made its predecessor, Wikipedia, so successful.

Wall Street Journal
An article on Wikicities appeared in the Wall Street Journal at the end of March. Many of the different wikis were mentioned, and some Wikicitizens were interviewed for the piece. The article also appeared in Spanish.


 * Through Wikicities, groups of Web users can create their own free Web sites and fill them with, well, nearly anything. Among the topics being discussed on the nascent site: Macintosh computers, college hockey and real-world cities like Los Angeles, Beijing and Calgary...read more

Wired
Wikicities 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 Wikicities got a 270 word mention. The following extract is from page 136 of the magazine, and is also available on Wired.com.


 * 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.

Press release
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...'

Forbes
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.