I was going through CEO Gil Penchina’s Wikia presentation slides at the Le Web conference in Paris last month and noticed something that made me realize they could be a huge site some day. According to the company, Wikia is producing 2.5 million page views per day and growing steadily, and their new article growth rate tracks the early days of Wikipedia, nearly identically. The key slide from Penchina’s presentation is below, comparing growth in unique articles between the two sites, but over different time periods.
So Wikia, the for-profit sister site to Wikipedia, is closely tracking the early growth of Wikipedia in terms of new article generation. The obvious conclusion is that what worked for Wikipedia may work for Wikia, too. Certainly the same forces of user generated content and community are in play.
It’s harder to compare page views as Wikipedia has apparently not tracked their own page views for years, but Wikia is certainly holding their own at 2.5 million/day.
Wikia confirms that they currently have nothing more than a “default” deal with Google for text ads on their site. The big ad networks (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) are all trying lock up long term deals with big partners, usually by offering some sort of revenue guarantee (see Google’s nearly $1 billion deal with MySpace and Microsoft’s deal with Facebook). I wouldn’t be surprised to see each of them begin to pursue Wikia as well, simply as a hedge in the event the site someday grows to even a fraction of Wikipedia’s size. Whichever company locks up Wika over the long term may have a very nice asset down the road.
Our earlier coverage of Wikia is here.
Wikia is not a “sister site to Wikipedia”. Please read Wikia’s page about Wikimedia for clarifications.
Sure, it’s growing, but are quality articles being written? I’d love it if someone could point us to 2 or 3 quality wikia pages. I’ve been forwarded dozens of bad sites, and landed on dozens more from search engines. Most of these were everyday people who wanted to create communities (TV and entertainment in my case), and naively thought that others would contribute.
If you know some great Wikia pages, send em along … maybe I’ve just had bad experience, but I just don’t get the draw of Wikia yet.
Angela – sure it is. Same software. Jimmy Wales is actively involved in both companies. Only reason they aren’t formerly affiliated is that wikipedia is a non-profit organization, and Wikia is for profit. “Sister site” has no legal meaning, but in my opinion it is very descriptive of the relationship.
Angela – I just saw your blog, which answered my question! I had no idea that Uncyclopedia was a Wikia site … so I stand corrected. I also liked Marvel Database and http://starwars.../wiki/Main_Page.
So now I’m a convert … where do I invest?
@2 (Anita)
I wonder if the same were true about Wikipedia articles in 2002-2003, though. The wayback machine suggests it is:
http://web.arch....wikipedia.org/
http://web.arch.../wiki/Abba_Eban
An even better example: http://web.arch...wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Someone above was wondering if there are quality articles on Wikia. I just went to the home page http://www.wikia.com , chose a couple and hit “random page” on them… looks pretty good to me.
http://lost.wikia.com
http://muppet.w...iki/Muppet_Wiki
http://muppet.w...wiki/Miss_Piggy
http://starwars...wiki/Darth_Maul
http://uncyclopedia.org (this looks like humor but doesn’t look work safe)
http://www.marveldatabase.com
I agree on the quality. I cant imagine this becoming anything nearly as big as wikipedia.
“Sure, it’s growing, but are quality articles being written? ”
Probably not (this being the internet and all), but since the purpose of the site is to make money, quality is irrelevant. cf. YouTube, MySpace, Network Television…
I am perplexed as Wikia seems redundant, almost duplicative. I can’t knock their growth. Good stuff.
Wikia’s margin’s have to be awesome too. Very interesting.
I bet most of the people adding content to it are the same people adding the content to wikipedia. There people are just addicted to it I think.
I think maybe they need to add more social aspects to the site so users that add to the site get some credit for it. Also then people could rate people on the quailty of the content. Who knows a more social aspect could drive the content to be better than wikipedias.
I could imagine the fight to serve ads on the site will be a big one.
Darren –
I work at Wikia. We recently acquired armchairgm
http://www.armchairgm.com
and are working on ways to incorporate some of the ranking features they’ve developed. Be sure to check out their top users page http://www.armc...title=Top_Stuff
Michael (Arrington),
As Angela mentioned, it is inaccurate to say it is a “for-profit sister site” as both Gil Penchina and Jimmy Wales have actively discouraged this exact phrase to describe a relationship between Wikia and Wikipedia.
There is no formal relationship, and it would be a disservice for Techcrunch to imply a greater than “spiritual” link between the two. If you are reluctant to withdraw the “sister” phrase, at least an update and disclaimer could explain that no financial or organizational ties exist.
I’m an admirer of this blog, and it pains me to see it perpetuate something that is already very poorly understood by folks outside the wiki community.
Cheers,
-Andrew
I don’t get people who contribute to a site like Wikia. WTF people? You are just making some 10 executives super-rich by doing all the work yourself. It worked fine with Wikipedia (non-profit, bla bla bla), but I doubt this can scale.
Wikia/Wikipedia/Flickr/YouTube are like commercial banks for information / media. They store the information, protect it for you with some permanence, give you access to the information, and provide you audience for your work. Banks fundamentally protect your money, give you access to your money, and hopefully give you a little interest on the side.
People pay bank fees. Would you pay a wiki a fee to store your information? No, would you be subjected to a small # of ads. Most people would say yes. Its an equitable trade.
We are moving to an information economy and society. Time to wake up Permanent Hater.
Wikipedia vs Wikia popularity (according to Alexa):
http://www.alex...l=www.wikia.com
The recent spike in Wikia’s popularity is due to the openserving.com buzz.
Great comment #16
Michael, even though they might not have generate the 2.5M page views per day, just by blogging about them, you sure have come close to that
@John – Assuming information economy and society works out coherently well – where do you see DRM going?
Their growth should be higher than the one of wikipedia to be accurrate.
The Internet world has changed between 2002 & 2005 :
- # users
- # usage of wiki
+ when people did it for wikipedia it was for the sole purpose of it…. where as on Wikia you do it for money @ least the openserving.com guys.
Anyway it’s gonna be a good deal. Hope they will manage to have the same ranking from Google.
Wikia is not a Wikimedia project.
Wikia is not a for-profit arm of Wikipedia
Wikia is not a sister project of Wikipedia.