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December 25, 2006

The Wikisearch Screenshot Isn’t Wikiasari, So What Is It?

Michael Arrington

38 comments »

A couple of days ago I posted a screenshot of what I believed to be an early version of the new Wikiasari search engine that Jimmy Wales has been talking about. Our source was good, and I went with it.

But Wales is saying that the screenshot has nothing to do with the project, in a comment to that post and also on the Wikiasari page on Wikia (since taken down, but screenshot is here).

The Wikiasari page also now gives a bit about the background of the project, and Wikisearch is not mentioned. The project was originally called 3apes.

So that leaves us with the Wikisearch screenshot, and I’m trying to figure out what it is. One of the commenters to the original post pointed out that it looks like its part of this project, which includes the Wikia logo on the bottom right. Unless it’s a fake site, that means it’s a Wikia search project, just as Wikiasari is.

So if Wikisearch isn’t Wikiasari, what the heck is it?

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, December 25th, 2006 at 11:43 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.

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Comments

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  1. first

    December 25th, 2006 at 11:55 pm

    w00t!

  2. SearcH EngineS WeB

    December 25th, 2006 at 11:56 pm

    The REAL Puzzling aspect to all of this was:

    How in the world had they acquired the (non wikipedia) Sponsor links

    Putting the Wikipedia links above the organic SERPs was obvious - but how did the right side sponsor links come about - and why would Those sites be chosen :-?

  3. Bryce

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:02 am

    I was beta testing this service searchme.com a while back, I found out it via Wikia. I just dug up my password, and it looks like the screen shots you showed.

    I’m pretty sure it’s got some relation to Wikia - as the support page in my intro email was - and I doubt Wikia would let some other project use their wiki for support and feedback.

    @SearcH EngineS WeB : The right side sponsor links are actually google adsense if you see their target links

  4. Bryce

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:05 am

    Update: http://search.wikia.com seems to be an official Jimmy Wales/WIKIPEDIA sanctioned one. Where as this is definately a screenshot of Searchme/Wikisearch which it seems is a WIKIA sanctioned one.

    That’s what I can gather.

  5. Brians

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:26 am

    What you is going on here is actually a hidden advertisement of their project - another “baloon” :) simply put, they guy wants to take more funding from investors..

  6. Michael Arrington

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:43 am

    Bryce, Wales has said explicitly as well that wikiasari is a wikia service, not a wikipedia service. And wikiasari.com points to a wikia page.

  7. Tarun Chandel

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:46 am

    This is interesting. I was discussing with few of my friends about how Wikia is copying the look n feel of Google and we all thought that this can be fake.

  8. Shii

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:47 am

    This seems to me like a mock-up image of Google + Wikipedia database instead of sponsored results. One can only wonder why the mock-up was made.

  9. Tarun Chandel

    December 26th, 2006 at 12:53 am

    Shii, I think that will be good, having wikipedia results plus the google results. I think I saw a similar mesh online and it was really good.

  10. Xavier

    December 26th, 2006 at 2:21 am

    Hi,

    This new search is quite interesting. I think the site webzzle.com can interest you as well (in french for the time being and soon in english if investors believe we can make something better for the users).

    We just released an alpha version of Webzzle to get feedback from people like you.

    Firstly, Webzzle helps you organize all what you like on Internet with concepts instead of keywords. We bring a new Object technology (using the concepts & much more) in order to build and bring, in a second time, a collaborative quality search engine to humanity.

    More over our technology can provide new features (like Webzzle Explore) to find good information without entering a search query.

    We combined Google because we use the service everyday. Our philosophy is to combine good services in order to improve the user experience.

    Hope you will like it (when it will be in English).

  11. Emre Sokullu

    December 26th, 2006 at 2:50 am

    Why you don’t ask this to your source :)

  12. S.Z.

    December 26th, 2006 at 3:00 am

    I noticed the post went to Digg’s frontpage very soon.

    Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com

  13. Phoenix

    December 26th, 2006 at 3:27 am

    “What the heck is it?”

    Image manipulation.

  14. Robert Resalte

    December 26th, 2006 at 4:00 am

    It’s real and you can become a beta tester by signing up here:
    http://www.searchme.com/beta/

  15. Beatbox

    December 26th, 2006 at 5:36 am

    It says right here that Wikiasari is the name of the software that runs the Wikia search:

    http://search.wikia.com/index......;oldid=705

    Wikia is just the wiki hosting service formerly known as Wikicities.

  16. Seth Finkelstein

    December 26th, 2006 at 10:16 am

    It’s a different project. See this public list message soliciting beta-testers:

    “We’re still looking for some more beta testers for Wikisearch. I can
    now share some more information about this. The search engine is being
    developed to search Wikia, Wikipedia, and all sites that are linked to
    from Wikipedia. If this search engine is released, Wikia will donate
    51% of the revenue made from advertising on the service to the
    Wikimedia Foundation. This isn’t a Wikimedia project but we hope it
    will be useful to people who use both Wikia and Wikipedia.”

  17. Jonathan

    December 26th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Why don’t you contact the domain name registrant?

    *****
    Registrant:
    Rivergold Associates Ltd
    Unit 11, Apollo Studios
    Charlton Kings Road, Kentish Town
    London, NW5 2SB
    GB

    Registrar: DOTSTER
    Domain Name: WIKISEARCH.COM
    Created on: 15-SEP-03
    Expires on: 15-SEP-07
    Last Updated on: 26-AUG-06

    Administrative, Technical Contact:
    Mindel, Andy / Mike domains@wordtracker.com
    Rivergold Associates Ltd
    Unit 11, Apollo Studios
    Charlton Kings Road, Kentish Town
    London, NW5 2SB
    GB
    0207 485 8855
    0207 424 8844

    Domain servers in listed order:
    NS1.NAMERESOLVE.COM
    NS2.NAMERESOLVE.COM
    NS3.NAMERESOLVE.COM
    NS4.NAMERESOLVE.COM

    End of Whois Information
    *****

  18. Beatbox

    December 26th, 2006 at 10:29 am

    Jonathan - did you think of that on your own? You’re so damn smart.

  19. Fashion Industry Ceo

    December 26th, 2006 at 11:28 am

    any update on exactly what the screenshots were??????

  20. Shii

    December 26th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    #19: They were confirmed to be this site: http://www.searchme.com/beta/ and the search results are obviously Google + Wikipedia + useless tag cloud.

  21. Angela

    December 26th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    Wikisearch is just a working name for a project which searches Wikipedia and the sites linked from it. It’s something Wikia is testing (see Wikisearch Feedback), but is not a Wikia project. Wikiasari was the name of a very old Wikia search project and is not what the new Wikia search project will be called. I blogged about this a month ago at wikiangela.com.

  22. Robert Resalte

    December 26th, 2006 at 4:48 pm

    #20 Inside sources confirm that Google search was not used - it is an entirely new engine and index - the tag cloud is actually a list of vertical Wikipedia categories that lead the searcher into a vertical search engine with more relevant results - quite different.

  23. Seth Finkelstein

    December 26th, 2006 at 6:04 pm

    Robert, FYI, I asked Wales about the rumor regarding Sequoia Capital funding, and he said they’re not involved in the new Wikiasari search engine project.

  24. Randy Adams

    December 26th, 2006 at 9:14 pm

    Seth, Wales is correct and so is Robert - don’t confuse Wikisearch with Wikiasari, they are two different projects.

    Wikiasari (probably not what it will be called) is Jimmy’s vision for a community powered search engine and has not yet been developed and is still in the concept stage - it is also not a commercial product - will definitely be open source.

    Wikisearch, on the other hand, was developed by and is a trademark of Searchme, Inc. (a Sequoia company) using a totally new search technology. Searchme will launch this service (it is a search engine for Wikipedia and External Links) in January. SearchMe and Wikia have a contractual agreement to donate the majority of the revenue from Adsense ads on WikiSearch to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a commercial product created to help raise funds for the Wikimedia Foundation with the approval and cooperation of Wikia. WikiSearch is community driven in the sense that it indexes only pages external to Wikipedia which have been selected and approved by the community as External links but it is not what Jimmy is envisioning for the future.

    Randy Adams
    CEO
    Searchme, Inc.
    randy@searchme.com

  25. Dob

    December 26th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

    Lesson learned: stick to your usual fare of excellent Internet biz and tech model analysis, Mike. Leave the rumors and “exclusive scoops!” to the other 1mm drivel mills on the web.

  26. stavrosthewonderchicken

    December 27th, 2006 at 12:41 am

    3apes is a *way* better name.

  27. James Byers

    December 27th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

    Here’s another somewhat-related recent development from the ‘huh?’ files.

    Remeber wiki.com, the domain John Gotts optioned at $3 million? The front page was down for a bit and now redirects to wikia:

    http://www.wiki.com

  28. Bob Pack

    December 27th, 2006 at 3:54 pm

    Wikiasari seems to copying in some ways ( the idea of ) a new search engine already out called, Sproose. It lets’ the users moderate and rank the idex on what a user deems important. Sproose is built on Nutch/ Lucene and has a strong index…….

  29. Dave

    January 2nd, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Hey James,

    Yes, this is truly sad news. Ownership of wiki.com has likely been handed back to Dynamo.com. And I was so looking forward to running “vaporware.wiki.com!” ;-)

    -Dave

  30. Rob

    January 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    “Wikiasari seems to copying in some ways ( the idea of ) a new search engine already out called, Sproose.”

    I think Bob Pack is right… the whole site is almost the same, I mean the ideas… though this one is better.. for me..

    -Rob
    KeywordDiscovery.com

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