User blog comment:Craiglpalmer/Wikia is now Fandom powered by Wikia/@comment-4083900-20160926232908

Thanks for all the comments -- I appreciate all the feedback and passion you have on this topic!

When I see common themes in the discussion that could use some more explanation I'll post more information. In this post, I want to comment further on the choice of the name Fandom.

First of all, this name was chosen very carefully to encompass the entire world our communities represent. To support this, here is the Wikipedia definition of Fandom:

"Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest.  Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the object(s) of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as part of a social network with particular practices (a fandom); this is what differentiates "fannish" (fandom-affiliated) fans from those with only a casual interest.   A fandom can grow around any area of human interest or activity."

I hope you agree after reading this that Fandom is a great term that encompasses all community interest and all areas of fan activity within our platform. Additionally, even after a decade of existence, Wikia is still confused with Wikipedia and Fandom will fix this.

Second, we want the brand to drive new readers and contributors to your community. Over the past few years we have been measuring the brand awareness of Wikia and even though Fandom news and stories has only been in existence for 9 months, Fandom brand awareness will soon surpass Wikia -- which has been in market for over a decade. This is amazing.

Finally, we have been getting feedback from many of you on the name Fandom for many, many months. As I'm sure you can appreciate, with 360 thousand communities and 190 million monthly users, it is impossible to get everyone to agree. I can assure you that in general we got great support for Fandom even though of course not everyone will agree with the choice.

So to summarize, we felt it was important to make a change, we picked the best name (out of many choices), most of you agree it's a good one and the brand recognition it will bring more users to your communities. While change is never easy, I hope with the benefit of time, more and more of you will come to see this as a great choice.