It was eleven months ago that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales first mentioned his vision for a people-powered search engine that would eventually launch under his for profit startup, Wikia.
Not much has happened since then, other than a lot of chatter on an email discussion list, and the small acquisition of Grub, a distributed web crawling company, from Looksmart. The official site for Wikia Search is here.
But the promise has been for Wikia Search to launch this year, and it appears to be on track. Yesterday Matthew Buckland reported that Wales showed “some of the first screen shots” of the new project (the first, as far as I know).
The main screen shot is a profile page for a user (see above) that looks surprisingly like a Facebook profile. It was taken by Nic Haralambous.
The Man v. Machine debate as it applies to search is about to begin. By this time next year we should have lots of data on the performance of Wikia Search, as well as the new startup Mahalo which is also in this space. Until then, we can spend our time speculating and, I guess, continuing to live with Google for our search needs.
UI looks very facebook inspired.
I predict that this will be successful, very much so.
People don’t realize how much potential there is in search because no one ever tries anything new. What we did is as different from Google as Wikia is, and so are a couple other projects.
Techcrunch and Robert Scoble really drown people in Social networking and so forth, so people can’t even think on their own anymore. They automatically just have ideas of spinning of facebook or twitter and they think it’s a lock.
I predict Wikia as a grand success. BTW, Jimmy Wales did a pr0n site. I mention it because I know he hates it when people mention it.
A big question is whether the search results will use the “old Wiki” model or the new model. As it stands, Wikipedia is controlled by a relatively small set of high powered editors. These editors make sure that things stay clean in a very broad sense. If you consider the concept behind Wikipedia, this kind of loose editorial control kind of flies in the face of the “anyone can be an editor” ideal.
This profile page seems to be an indication that Wales wants to put a face to users. It will be interested in seeing whether just anyone will be able to edit search results or will it be more tightly controlled.
Jimmy Wales is gra8 man, sometime i thinl he is only man who can stay in compeition with google
I love it how these rubbish ideas like wikia search and mahalo get tons of cash because of the entrepreneur associated with them.
If anyone else tried to raise the cash on these ideas they would be laughed at.
Steve: “anyone can edit” is in the sense of “anyone is able to edit”, not “anyone *may* edit”. There is only one concept and one ideal behind Wikipedia – being an encyclopaedia. Free editing is merely a means to that end and, IMO, one that has almost outlived its usefulness if it hasn’t already.
I wouldn’t say anyone controls Wikipedia, anyway. They have a fairly good defence against outright vandalism, but there’s nothing like the level of control needed to deal with the huge amounts of crap that has no place in an encyclopaedia. Its democratic structure paralyses any potential large scale corrective action. Nor is there any incentive to change this due to Wikimedia’s not-for-profit status.
Just thought I’d link up Matthew Buckland who actually broke the story and took that pic.
What is it that incents the members of the Wikia social network to do the work of a people powered search engine?
Compare and contrast wikia to Mahalo: Jason has taken the direct route, cutting through the bluster & idealism to deliver a targeted product. I.e.: what are people looking for? the top 20k search terms. What will it take to get good results for each? Money. Done & Done. The risk in Jason’s world comes from SEO/awareness and advertising profit margins – not the vagaries of community.
Wikia sounds like its taking the wide open generalist approach: potential to be very successful, yes, but also to go the way of DMOZ and just sort of peter out from apathy and/or poor execution. Wikia is taking on all sources of risk, community and business model, with the hope of taking a bigger slice of the pie.
I’m a skeptic by nature, so good luck to Wikia.
Where in South Africa was this shown?
Sorry, I still can’t get into anything from SA.
… I was jailed there for resisting apartheid for 6 years back in the early 70’s.
I agree with Chris R. , I also think Wikia will be a success. Wikipedia was also ridiculed at the beginning.
Just a correction on Jasons comment, the pic was taken from nicharalambous.com
Consumerisum is more then just greed and profit. It’s a combination of material aspects and people’s trust, beliefs and views. The world is changing and so is search. Human-powered search will be the next big thing.
There’s no doubting we’ll see a rise in the number of references to Facebooks UI design and information architecture. Facebook didn’t do anything drastically different to those that came before them – profile pages have always had a boxey modular layout – but facebook just hit the nail on the head with the clean colours, coherent gutters & margins, and the excellent mini/news feeds. Wikia obviously takes a huge amount of inspiration from this, but at least users won’t feel alienated.
Thanks for the link, Michael. Love your work. Hope my servers hold up
Yeah — story broken on my blog… and then after a search the next day for the actual photo of the screenshot, I found it on Nic H’s flickr, which I then linked to after the Mashable post…
So its correct on yr blog now.
Cheers — matt
Dude…not everything looks like FB. It’s called a social network and they all look the same. the funny thing is that if it’s an Arrington article, expect to find facebook somewhere in there!
Good luck to Jimmy, as we need a fresh approach to searching that goes against the Google grain.
Even with Google, Search is not perfect, think to the classic Keywords problem of Paris Hilton.(The Paris Hotel or the American Loser)
With Jimmy it seems like he is going to integrate his Wikipedia model into a Facebook/Google gravy, to come up with a more human driven social search experience.
Both Google and Facebook should be concerned especially as his possible integration of Search and Social shows up the weakness of both of these Companies. Google with Social and Facebook with Search.
If Jimmy’s project takes off then I would see either Microsoft or Yahoo looking to acquire Wikia Search especially as both of them are current losers in Search and Social.
I just worry about how they will be impacted by black-hat SEO groups. If this has any success, it will be the number one target for these firms. Wikia will in turn have to put in filters. These filters will make it hard for first time contributors to participate. And as Wikipedia is, the site will largely be controlled by a subset of its users.
I think this might have more success than Mahalo as it appeals more readily to Europeans, Australians, etc. And those groups have significantly more free time on their hand.
This is proof that social networking and the web will bring down barriers with respect to privacy. If you want privacy, the web may not be for you. The good thing here is that if you don’t have anything to hide, you are okay. The people who are trying to scheme and rip people off will be exposed. I hope this is a success just because I hate scammers, pedophiles, etc.
http://www.myciti.us
do we really need yet another search ?!
Semi off-topic,
but J.Wales owns/drives a black Ferrari Enzo – i saw a guy that looks extremely like him get into one on youtube. he was exiting a Monte carlo casino and entered the Enzo
~$1M
#11: I still ridiculed wikipedia.
And will always ridiculed wikipedia.
And will continue to ridicule anything ridiculous that the wikipedia tree huggers create.
Wikipedia tought me that South Africa was a country on the left hand side of Mars. Brilliant!
Pretty sure this is just a photoshopped facebook profile.
@16
Quit your whining James. I’m tired of people moaning on about TechCrunch covering Facebook. If you don’t like the topic then don’t read the article, how simple is that?
Besides, all social networks do not look the same and Facebook has always stood out from the rest due to its more ‘clean’ look. This looks exactly like a Facebook profile and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was fake.
Ok, not fake but I still think it looks a lot like Facebook. It should have been different.
i hope they change their layout before they release it for reals. definitely looks like a facebook profile with a different “skin”
i posted some thoughts about this yesterday (click myname if interested) – though now that im seeing the bigger image (nice job mike!) – i am wondering if its just a typical mockup for quick sake.
But if he goes thru with this – he has such a huge base that adding on to it might work rather well.
FYI, documents from the Securities And Exchange Commission reveal that the Grub crawler was sold to Wikia for only $50,000.
Revealed: Wikia (Wikipedia-Model) search bought “Grub” crawler for $50K
We have had our site up and running in a smaller scale from these startups.
Its called TallStreet.com
OK, check this out new search site out …it has already got a 50 Million pages index and they are categorizing the web and adding the social search…
The site is http://www.visvo.com
speaking of second time entreprenuers who have no problem getting funding, and who only seem to be trying to replicate their past success…
@31&31
thanks for stopping by, nohar
Good concept but I think it is too late.
http://www.yedda.com – Just acquired by AOL (http://www.tech...-israels-yedda/ ).
This is human search at its best – not just a wiki, but a wiki created just for me, for my personal and specific question/inquiry.
Mahalo is just plain embarassing. Calacanis must be hurting.
Just a correction on Jasons comment
@1 pfff! It’s just a basic styled website — if that reminds YOU of Facebook, then FACEBOOK is a basic-styled website.
…oh wait, facebook IS a f**king basic- styled run-of-the-mill, no-designer-could-be-found, what-is-color-for? website!
lets wait and see. He is not the first to have tried it.
Facebook and social networking is worthless. Time wasters for procrastinators