Is Wikipedia getting into social networking?

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Search

Is Wikipedia getting into social networking?

by Brad Linder Nov 16th 2007

We've been hearing bits and pieces of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' big plans for a search engine for a while now. But it's never been entirely clear how this human-powered search engine would look. Would it be more like Google or Mahalo?

South African blogger Matthew Buckland raises a third option that we hadn't considered. It could look a lot like Facebook.

Last night Wales showed a few screenshots of his new search project to a South African audience. Buckland was in attendance, and he says some of the screenshots looked exactly like Facebook profile pages. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that your search results are going to take you to social networking style pages. Honestly, that doesn't even make much sense. If you're searching for information on Abraham Lincoln, you probably don't expect to find his MySpace page.

So these screenshots could just be showing the user profiles of Wikiasari editors. But considering how many people read and edit Wikipedia every day, we could easily see any sort of social networking component growing pretty big and fast. And without Facebook-style advertising.

Tags: Jimmy-Wales, Wikiasari, Wikipedia

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

smith said 10:36AM on 11-19-2007

The social networking application marketplace was comparatively small in 2006, coming in at $46.8 million. By 2009, however, this market will grow to $428.3 million creating a new application segment and establishing social networking as a new communications instrument used for many purposes other than consumer socializing.

Source: http://www.ceoworld.biz/?p=363

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