Wikia has quietly launched semi-private college/university wikis. And they’ve taken a page out of Facebook’s game plan by requiring users to have an approved university email address in order to edit the wiki. The wiki itself, however, is viewable by everyone.
The goal is to have better data by keeping out people who aren’t directly affiliated with the university. On the downside, of course, is the fact that people have to find their college email address in order to add content. Facebook clearly provides enough incentive to users to do that. It isn’t clear yet if Wikia will have the same level of success.
An example wiki for Stanford is here. Information on creating a semi-private university wiki is here.
This is still an experiment, and pre-existing open wiki’s about colleges and universities can be found at students.wikia.com. No word from Wikia on how they will handle having two versions of wikis for each university (one open and one semi-private).
Wikia continues to march along and do well after raising $4 million back in March and hiring a former eBay executive, Gil Penchina, to lead the company. Gil says Wikia is now generating 5 million daily page views on a million unique visitors. And their recently launched Travel Guides now have over 1,200 articles in ten languages covering 160 cities, just eight weeks after launch.
Comments
This seems like a nice idea but I doubt whether it will take off since most university and colleges already have extensive information on their own sites and any user would trust content from a school/college ’s own website rather than a wiki.
Duke University already has a wiki - http://www.duiki.com
I like wikipedia better
Watch out for the majorly NSFW Wikia home page image…..Looks like those meddling college kids are a bit out of control. Doesn’t bode well.
Guys, look at that Stanford Wiki, it’s ugly.
Do you think college students nowadays who are spoiled for choice with usable & sexy websites are going to fall for that thing?
Raised 4 million just for setting up a server and installing a mediawiki on it? …
When I have my higher education cap on, I see that and I almost think “Why?” But then I have my web loving cap on and I see web 2.0 companies jumping over to service higher education and I like it.
Bottom line, the technology isn’t just for those in the offices, its for the students too. And Wikis are catching on with students.
We’ve had a student wiki at Connecticut College for over a year
http://connwiki.conncoll.edu/i.....=Main_Page
“Wikia continues to march along and do well after raising $4 million back in March and hiring a former eBay executive, Gil Penchina, to lead the company. Gil says Wikia is now generating 5 million daily page views on a million unique visitors. And their recently launched Travel Guides now have over 1,200 articles in ten languages covering 160 cities, just eight weeks after launch.”
I guess you could consider that marching along and doing well, but I’d actually prefer to learn how much revenue has been generated. I agree with Mickey. $4 million for taking Mediawiki and building this seems like a waste. It could have been done with a minimal investment (low six-figures).
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