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December 11, 2006

Wikia Announces Free Wiki Hosting

Natali Del Conte

29 comments »

Wikia founder Jimmy Wales believes in “free content for all.” That is why the company launched OpenServing today, a service that is giving away complete Web hosting support to any wiki developer - for free!

OpenServing allows anyone to setup and maintain their own collaborative site. Wales told TechCrunch in a phone call today that OpenServing is also intended to go beyond wiki hosting to include free software, free applications, etc. “Basically, anything goes into the model of free culture,” he said.

Wikia will provide free software, bandwidth, storage, computing power, and content over the Internet. What’s more, Wikia will give away 100 percent of the ad inventory and revenue to any blogger/Web site owner who wants to sign-up for this. The only stipulation is that developers link to Wikia’s home site in order to drive ad revenue.

“The main thing we’re looking for is that they drive traffic back to Wikia but we’re not just thinking of any link back to the home page, but a content-relevant link,” Wales said. “We’re not just asking for an advertisement but a link for articles and things that are relevant on our wikis.”

If sites that use OpenService sell ads on their wiki, they are not responsible to share that revenue with Wikia.

“Basically they’re free to sell ads on their own site,” Wales explained. “We may at one point offer a service to broker those ads but that’s not our model right now. Our model is basically to say ‘You keep the ad revenue, we’re not really worried about that.’”

This announcement solves at least some of the mystery behind Wikia’s purchase of ArmchairGM earlier this month. ArmchairGM is the first freely-licensed software package that OpenServing will offer up. It is also noteworthy that Wikia received an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon just weeks ago, which is likely an important contributing factor to Wikia’s ability to do this.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 1:43 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.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Wikia Lauches Free Wiki Hosting » Dee’s-Planet! Blog

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  2. Jimmy’z Blog » Wiki + Drupal + Digg = Openserving

    December 11th, 2006 at 6:46 pm

  3. Eric Waltmire’s Blog - Will Goolge Provide a Free Web OCR App?

    December 14th, 2006 at 10:15 pm

  4. Brock Log (BLog) - A BLog in the Life of… » Everybody gets a Wiki

    December 20th, 2006 at 1:01 pm

  5. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Wikipedia to Launch Search Engine: Exclusive Screenshot

    December 23rd, 2006 at 8:50 pm

  6. TechCrunch en français » Wikipedia lancera un moteur de recherche: saisie d’écran exclusive

    December 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 pm

  7. Media-Blog » Bekommt Google bald Konkurrenz? Jimmy Wales plant Suchmaschine Wikiasari

    December 24th, 2006 at 3:46 am

  8. Wikipedia to Launch Search Engine: Exclusive Screenshot

    January 8th, 2007 at 10:52 pm

Comments

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  1. Ian

    December 11th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    I imagine this “free” hosting is a direct result of the undisclosed amount of funding they just received.

    Statements like “You keep the ad revenue, we’re not really worried about that.” force me to reiterate my previous statement (on the Wikia funding post) that it’s beging to feel a lot like 1999-2000.

  2. Jerome

    December 11th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    The title can be improved: doesn’t Wikia already offer free wiki hosting? It seems as if Wikia is offering free to host free niche topic diggs. Check out the tour . . . http://www.openserving.com/tour/view.html

  3. Gabe

    December 11th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    It doesn’t look like they will just be providing free hosted wikis. As it says on the Openserving website: “Openserving is looking to expand. If you are a developer and would like to suggest other open source software you’re willing to help us install and maintain on our servers.” Looks that they want to provide hosted open source software of all kinds.

  4. Jerome

    December 11th, 2006 at 3:06 pm

    Yeah, the first one being decentralized Digg for niche topics. So, pretty much, Wikia is going to take on Digg, expect with open-content information.

  5. J

    December 11th, 2006 at 3:15 pm

    This is such B.S… They’re just trying to pump up the creation of garbage content. What AdSense started, Wikia will continue :) And what an ugly interface!

  6. lawrence coburn

    December 11th, 2006 at 3:17 pm

    This is an SEO play, methinks.

  7. mug

    December 11th, 2006 at 3:45 pm

    I love this concept. :) Will we be allowed to use our own scripts/software?

  8. Kevin

    December 11th, 2006 at 4:13 pm

    How is this much different in concept from wordpress.com? http://wordpress.com/

    Other than different types of open source sw packages (wordpress.com only offers…obviously…wordpress) it seems to be basically the same concept. You can keep all of the advertising revenue from wordpress.com. They pay for the infrastructure and hosting costs. It is free.

    Am I missing something?

  9. mug

    December 11th, 2006 at 4:18 pm

    Kevin, you’ve already answered your own question. ;)

  10. ginchy

    December 11th, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    Let the age of spamwikis commence.

  11. Chris

    December 11th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    @ginchy - Don’t you think that a Viagra wiki fits into the definition of free culture? :-P

  12. jim

    December 11th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

    Where are they making their money? From the investors rather than the ads?

  13. John

    December 11th, 2006 at 7:11 pm

    I think its different, b/c Wordpress is just a blog. This is pretty much a Digg. You fill out a form and get your own Digg. Let’s say your into fly fishing . . . you can have a fly fishing Digg. Or your into the S.F. 49ers, you can have a 49ers Digg.

    If I read the tour correctly, that’s what’s going on. Sounds cool.

  14. David Mackey

    December 11th, 2006 at 9:10 pm

    wow. this is an awesome move on wikia’s part, but will it be financially viable.

  15. Alexander Muse

    December 11th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

    If you sign up they simply send you this email:

    Thank you for your request. Our team will create your openserving account
    soon.

    In the meantime, if you have questions, please reply to this address. We’ll
    do our best to help.

    Regards,

    The Customer Support Team

    No free wikis yet…

  16. michal frackowiak

    December 12th, 2006 at 12:22 am

    So - will THIS make Wikia profitable at least? ;-)

    michal

  17. Rexted

    December 28th, 2006 at 1:03 am

    Check this out

  18. Vfreeinfo

    January 6th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

    I imagine this “free” hosting is a direct result of the undisclosed amount of funding they just received.

  19. David Maxwell

    January 7th, 2007 at 2:48 am

    I think the free hosting arises from the fact that Jimmy Wales has decided to compete with Google (and with the Google business model) on many different fronts.

  20. samuel mike

    January 22nd, 2007 at 7:38 am

    Puppy Parade
    I stayed late last night with fellow intern buddy Sam, and we went through back issues of the magazine. Seven days left of the internship, and I’m only beginning to realize that I’m such a small part of this very large, very old literary tradition. I feel fortunate to have had this opportunity, but I have to say it’s gone all too fast. I could have used a few more months at least. Seven days and I’m once again at a crossroads with a hundred different paths before me and only the dimmest sense of which way I want to go. I feel somewhat smarter this time around, and having jumped off the edge at least once already, it’s a lot less intimidating. Still, the whole ordeal is all very daunting and depressing.

    To chear myself up, I walked past the puppy store on the way home tonight. I don’t think I ever saw a puppy store in DC, but in New York, they seem to be everywhere. Of course, I took it upon myself early on to memorize the locations of at least three so that I would be prepared when times like these arise. Sometimes all you need is a little puppy love. I was admiring their furry little ewok faces through the plated glass, basquing in their puppy glow when an older woman came up and began gushing about how she wanted to buy each and every one of them. At this moment, a second woman appeared, who looked every bit like the wicked witch of the west reinterpreted as a middle-aged Jewish woman. And like the Wicked Witch, she evidently hated puppies and happiness. The heartless shrew had to rain on our puppy parade. “You don’t want to buy those,” she grunted. “They’re sick. They’re from puppy farms, you know. How sad.” And then she puttered away, having sufficiently ruined my one little spot of sunshine in this otherwise gloomy day.

    Look at this cute little face. How can this face make you sad? Impossible, I say.

    CONTACT THE G.M.D. THROUGH THE EMAIL
    ;SAMUELSTORE_2007@YAHOO.COM

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    February 12th, 2007 at 5:23 am

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