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Filed under: Business, Web services

Wikia gets into the lyrics business, acquires LyricWiki

Most people have heard of Wikipedia, but Wikia (co-founded by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales) is a little bit less well-known. It's a collection of fan-based wikis where people can obsessively catalog info about sports teams, bands, movies, and all kinds of other pop culture material. The latest addition to Wikia is song lyrics, now that the company has purchased LyricWiki.

In the process of snapping up LyricWiki, Wikia also negotiated a licensing deal for the song lyrics themselves, so there's no worry about record companies trying to shut the site down. Wikia runs on open-source wiki software and doesn't show tons of ads, like every other lyric site you'll stumble upon if you try Googling for song lyrics. It also has the advantage of a large number of users to correct the lyrics, so you're likely to find more accurate results than on sites that function more as banner-ad billboards than lyrics collections.

[via VentureBeat]

Filed under: Search, Web

Wikia kills its search engine, now can Google please kill Knol?

Wikia Search
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced plans to kill off the Wikia Search project. Wikia Search was built to be sort of the Wikipedia of search engines. While a computer generates initial search results, users can adjust the order of results and even alter descriptions. When I checked out Wikia Search last summer I was actually pretty impressed with its feature set. And then I forgot about it and never visited the page again. Because the truth is that the search engine didn't really do a better job of helping me find what I was looking for than Google, Yahoo!, or Live Search.

Wales says the decision to shutter the service is a financial one. In the current economy it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the time and money developing the service at the expense of other Wikia projects.

Now that Wales is pulling out of the search business, I can't help but wonder whether Google will take the hint and pull out of the encyclopedia biz. Google is also dealing with a tough economy. This week the company laid off 200 people in its sales and marketing division. And in January Google closed the door on Jaiku, Google Notebook and Google Video.

But the company hasn't closed Google Knol, a service that many people see as Google's answer to Wikipedia. Knol isn't really an encylopedia. Rather, it's a spot for experts to publish pages about topics they're well versed in. But it doesn't have Wikipedia's user base, visibility, or influence. Perhaps in a better economy it would make sense to continue developing Knol, but right now I'm not sure it makes any more sense for Google to compete with Wikipedia than for Wikipedia to take on Google.

[via CNet]

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

Search Wikia Alpha launches, not useful at all... yet

Wikia Search Alpha
For those waiting with baited breath for Jimmy Wales to launch the distance cousin of Wikipedia, the wait is over. For everyone else, umm... Search Wikia Alpha is live today. What was originally billed as a human-powered search engine much the same way Wikipedia is a human-powered encyclopedia is right now just a second-rate computer-powered web search site that lets you create user profiles.

Theoretically Search Wikia will get better with time as more users create profiles. That's because you can add keywords for things you're interested in to your profile. When users search for those terms, your picture will show up on the right side of the screen. You'll be able to edit search results matching those keywords, and presumably other users will be able to click on your profile to find relevant links and articles.

But right now, Search Wikia is pretty much machine powered and far less likely to give you what you're looking for than Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, or any of the other competitors. But as founder Jimmy Wales points out at TechCrunch, it's not really fair to compare Search Wikia to sites that have been around for a decade or more. Not only has Search Wikia just launched (in alpha, no less), but in order for the site to thrive, it needs to build a dedicated user base to edit search reults. And how could anyone expect that to have happened by day one?

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Search

Wikia Search private beta launches

Wikia Search

Exactly one year after Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales first announced plans to create a human powered search engine, Wikia Search has launched in private beta. There aren't a ton of details to report right now, but Wales sent a letter to the Wikia Search email list on Sunday evening announcing the private beta, as well as plans for a January 7th public launch.

Last month Wales delivered a speech in South Africa where he showed off a few images of the new search engine. Those pictures looked suspiciously like a social networking web site, but it's possible we were just looking at the personal profile pages for Wikia Search contributors.

The social search field has been heating up quite a bit recently. Mahalo, the human powered search engine created by Weblogs Inc co-founder Jason Calacanis has been up and running for a while now, and now both Wikia and Google are getting into the game. Either the competition will lead to greater innovation and the most useful search engines the world has ever seen, or potential contributors will be overwhelmed with choices that they'll decide it's easier not to bother submitting links to any social search site at all when they can just turn to good old Lycos and AltaVista for their search needs. No, seriously, both of those search engines still exist.

Filed under: Web services

Amazon buys a chunk of Wikia

WikiaVentureBeat is reporting that Amazon has bought a major stake in wiki company Wikia. Like many companies, Wikia allows people to create wikis for their interests or organizations. The company stands out in many people's minds because it's the brainchild of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Part of the purchase includes more than $2 million for the purchase of ArmchairGM, a somewhat successful sports wiki whose founders Dan Lewis, Aaron Wright, David Pean, and Rob Lefkowitz will join Wikia as full-time employees. ArmchairGM's user-generated news and voting technologies will be brought to other Wikia wikis and Wiki is considering other acquisitions as well. How Wikia fits in with Amazon's other interests like its web services isn't yet clear.

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