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December 6, 2006

Wikia Gets An Undisclosed Amount Of Funding From Amazon

Natali Del Conte

32 comments »

Wikia, a for-profit sister site of Wikipedia, received a second round of funding today, all of it coming from Amazon. No word yet on how much Amazon has forked over.

Just this week, Wikia announced that they would purchase ArmchairGM, an online sports community, for $2 million in cash and Wikia stock.

In March, we reported that the company received $4 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, with participation from angel investors Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor.

Wikia’s Gil Penchina told GigaOm that the funding and acquisition were “frankly very separate events” that “just happened to come together at the same time” but that the acquisition would have been hard to accomplish without Amazon’s money.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Ian

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    Good for them. Yet every time I see a story like this I wonder if we’re turning the clock back to 2000?

  2. Robot Dean Martin

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:17 pm

    Interesting. Very interesting.

    Yeah, it does seem like we’ve seen this picture before.

  3. Vik

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:23 pm

    Nice, I like websites that actually provide useful services. I am an attorney and use wikipedia every damn day at work. It is a great source for knowledge on just about everything!

    Glad to finally see TC coverage on something other than pic sharing, instant messaging and all the other crap that is messing up our kids and may lead to be the ultimate downfall of our country. Everything in moderation is good and I believe we Americans are going a bit extreme as far as entertainment is concerned. Videos on cellphones, give me a break!! Just my $0.02

  4. Clarke Scott

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    I agree, and I think that the future of useful information on the web is all the better for it. I wish Angela Beesley and all the folks at Wikia the best of luck :)

  5. Jose

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:44 pm

    So what exactly is the business model behind Wikia? I don’t get why they would need so much money.

  6. Jose

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    By the way Natalia, keep us updated on this.

  7. Beatbox

    December 6th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    Am I the only one that is still skeptical about information that can be edited by ANYONE.

    (#3) I’m surprised that an attorney would rely so heavily on this type of resource.

    How about Lexis Nexis?

  8. Jerome

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

    @beatbox

    Lexis Nexis is expensive and is hard to navigate through. Sometimes for a quick bit of information its easier to search on Wikipedia.

  9. Beatbox

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:08 pm

    Im sorry, but I wouldn’t want my attorney doing fact-checking on Wikipedia.

    Maybe for quick bits of info, but nothing more.

  10. michal frackowiak

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

    So, anyone knows if Wikia Inc is profitable or not at this point? Some time ago they were claiming to open a R&D center in Poland. Somehow this got forgotten… ;-)

  11. Vik

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:15 pm

    Exactly, Jerome. For me, $ is not really the issue because I work for a large law firm and we have a flat fee contract with both Lexis and WL. However, I use Wikipedia to get info on our clients, opposing parties (usually big corps), cities (make sure we’re filing lawsuit in the right court), etc. Also, Wikipedia is a great starting point for many of my research projects as it provides basic info on many different legal subjects.

  12. Vik

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

    #9 So far, wikipedia has served me well. But again, I use it just as a starting point in my research. I would not cite to a wikipedia article in a brief :-)

  13. Beatbox

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    Vik, thanks for the clarification. I can understand using Wikipedia under those circumstances.

  14. foobar

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    #10: Of course Wikia is profitable, I just edited their financial pages so that it says they are profitable, so obviously it is true! Lack of accountability in accounting is definitely the next wikifrontier!

    Wikiality indeed.

  15. Jerome

    December 6th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    total cost for Wikipedia this quarter: $321,200 or ~1.2 million for a year. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005

    Let’s assume, arguendo, that Wikia becomes half the size of Wikipedia, and only put up google ads. They would make a crap-load of money.

  16. Omar

    December 6th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    Wikia is not profitable. I believe it won’t even make any money - the traffic will stay minimal.

    Lightning doesn’t strike twice. If these investors really believe Jimmy Wales can pull off Wikia to even a fraction of the success that Wikipedia enjoys then they are blind.

  17. Anonymous

    December 6th, 2006 at 6:03 pm

    Wikia is not a “sister site” of Wikipedia. Saying they are such only encourages people to think they are the same thing as Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a non-profit and amazing effort. Wikia is a pile of dog shit.

  18. neotechie

    December 6th, 2006 at 7:52 pm

    WiAmazon ???

  19. anon

    December 6th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    “Wikia is a pile of dog shit.”

    That had me spitting saliva on my monitor! Most amusing.

    There does seem to be some ignorance as what wikia verses wikipedia is though - so it was worth pointing out.

  20. David Mackey

    December 6th, 2006 at 8:02 pm

    Interesting move on Amazon’s point. Though, a smart move, if Wikia will move forward in any similar way to Wikipedia.

  21. michal frackowiak

    December 7th, 2006 at 1:06 am

    Wikia does not offer “private wikis” - they must accept every proposal for a new site manually and they accept only these that have some “guarantee” of gathering strong community and success.

    They have recently moved into making some sort of “product” wikis - for iPod, games, some hardware…

    If they could put more effort on improving MediaWiki…

    As for profits: this surprises me. You do not have to be smart to make $1 per page 1000 impressions with Google Ads. Well, if you put them on the right-hand side it would be worse. But ok, let us see some graph:

    http://www.alexaholic.com/wikidot.com+wikia.com

    It seems Wikia is getting at least x10 - x20 more traffic that Wikidot. They also claim they have 1 milion visitors per day which simply do not match. If either of these is true, is it really THAT HARD to monetize this traffic? Wikidot is almost profitable (with very low running costs).

    Wikia could:
    - sell links (footers of the page)
    - different ads for product wikis (e.g. shopping.com?)
    - sell histing for private wikis
    - accept any proposed wikis (scalability issue? naaa)
    - build nice services

    I just do not follow their strategies. If Wikidot would have their traffic it would not need any investments at all to either keep it running or expand.

    regards - mf

  22. Denver Wang

    December 7th, 2006 at 2:36 am

    This is a good site to browser, as wiki.org was blocked.

    http://www.ezecho.com

  23. Adrian Keys

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:28 am

    Hey…I constantly hear of companies raising funds…sometimes obscene amounts. What am I doing wrong??

    http://www.revafinancial.squarespace.com

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