March 27, 2006

Wikia Raises $4 Million

Michael Arrington

23 comments »

Wikia, formerly called Wikicities, announced a $4 million Series A round today. The financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, and had participation from angel investors Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor. David Cowan of Bessemer also wrote about this on his personal blog.

Wikia is a for profit venture by Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia. It hosts topic based wikis on a number of subjects, and anyone can add new ones.

Current traffic for Wikia is fairly non-existent, although Jimmy Wale’s wikipedia is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web and I’m sure that the investors are assuming that he’ll be able to drive a similar level of user loyalty. Fighting against that will be the less-compelling subject matter and the fact that this is a for-profit company.

I’d love to see an overhaul of the wikipedia and wikia writing interface, however. They have plenty of great examples to borrow from.

  • Sphere It

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Wikicities Re-Launches As Wiki at Awakened Voice Blog
  2. Alawiki.org » Blog Archive » Wiki is Hot
  3. TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Gil Penchina Leaves eBay To Run Wikia
  4. eBay CEO过档Wikia | BiZwiKi.CN - 喧闹 PK 噪音
  5. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Gil Penchina氏 eBayを去りWikiaを経営
  6. TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Wetpaint Launches: Wikis Evolve
  7. Ликбез » Wetpaint
  8. Web 2.0 - Что нового? Новости интернет проектов » Wetpaint запущен: Wiki наступают
  9. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Wetpaint開始: Wikiの進化
  10. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Wikia、Facebook風カレッジwikiをスタート
  11. Wikia Goes Facebook « Ray-Deo
  12. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Wikia Gets An Undisclosed Amount Of Funding From Amazon
  13. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Wikiaにアマゾンが出資、調達額は非公開
  14. Wikia Gets An Undisclosed Amount Of Funding From Amazon » JenIT
  15. Start-up.co.nz » Blog Archive » Wikia gets second round of funding from Amazon
  16. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Wikipedia to Launch Search Engine: Exclusive Screenshot
  17. Media-Blog » Bekommt Google bald Konkurrenz? Jimmy Wales plant Suchmaschine Wikiasari
  18. Wikiasari | Technically Speaking

Comments

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  1. Oliver Zheng

    It really amazes me how much money Wikipedia can raise.

  2. Alastair James

    Does anyone know what their business model is going to be? It cant simply be adwords on pages can it?

  3. David

    Hey, I am just trying to figure out how a journalist for a regional paper made so much money to become an angel investor.

  4. Saul Weiner

    Honestly, how much money can these guys make? Where’s the business model?

  5. Jama Poulsen

    Hopefully some of that money goes into the development of MediaWiki, the software underlying Wikipedia and also my wiki project: Wikicompany http://wikicompany.org

    It will be interesting to see if their add-driven business model gives enough returns on this investment.

    Wikicompany is a free content, worlwide business directory build by the community.

    Anyone in the world can quickly create a company profile using this webform: http://wikicompany.org/wiki/Special:WCPublish

    To understand the differences between Wikipedia and Wikicompany, please read: http://wikicompany.org/wiki/Wi....._Wikipedia

    Other interesting features:
    http://www.wikicompany.org/wik.....antic_tags
    http://www.wikicompany.org/wiki/Wikicompany:REST

    (Mike: If there is interest in an review article on TechCrunch about Wikicompany, just let me know.)

    Jama Poulsen
    (founder Wikicompany)
    info@wikicompany.org