Update: Wikia has confirmed that about 10 percent of its workers have been laid off, but points out that it is still trying to hire for open positions.
At the beginning of this year, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales officially launched his attempt at a human-powered search engine, dubbed Wikia Search. TechCrunch was not impressed initially, to say the least. Although it has come a long way since launch, it looks like the young venture behind the experimental search engine is feeling the nasty sting of the troubled economy.
Rumor has it that parent company Wikia is letting go 30% of its current 43-person workforce, a percentage that appears to be the rule of thumb for lay-offs these days. TechCrunch has been hearing rumors along these lines as well. The company, which also offers wiki software, has raised a total of $14 million to date from rockstar angel investors like Marc Andreessen, Joi Ito, and Ron Conway, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, the Omidyar Network and Amazon.
At this point, we have calls and e-mails out to the company asking them to confirm the cuts. We’ll update this post if they decide to respond. (See above).
The company is rumored to be bleeding cash, despite its effort to clean up its act in delivering decent search results and its recent addition of an API, opening its engine to anyone who wants their own data or application to show up in results. Other products of Wikia include a wiki creation tool with the same name, and Scratchpad Wiki Labs, which allows people to test and build mini-wikis before moving them over to Wikia’s full wiki sites.
Traffic numbers for the search engine seem to be heading in the right direction, but by now it should be clear that having a business model that depends solely on Google Ads will prove insufficient for many startups to weather the ongoing financial storm and pending recession.
The job cuts have been added in the TechCrunch Lay-off Tracker.
Now a days.. Every third post on TC is about layoff’s.. I am enough scared guys.
More to come, this is just the start of the downturn. We should all plan for a difficult next couple of years. I wouldn’t be surprised to see U.S unemployment rate hit 9% before all is said and done.
Silicon Valley won’t recover for years. This downturn is going to be extreme.
A tipster told me that Google is preparing to slash workforce in India as American employees are becoming cheaper these days given so many lay-offs….plenty to choose from.
omg… the frickin sky is falling, Wikia is laying people off? Holy S..t!!!
I am so over TC, the doomsdayers, the economic news that is totally unpredictable and all the sheep that think this is the end of the world.
I will never read TC again
George, you are a sheep – maybe a goat.
grow up, strap on a pair and get to work
I will do the same.
peace out b…tches
@Dan: Who gives a crap about being a sheep? After the biggest stock market fall since the Great Depression, liquidity falling to below zero, and the banks friggin’ all but *nationalised* – I don’t need much else to make me take some action to protect my behind.
I totally agree Jonathan. My point is simply that we should plan for the worse, better to be prepared. Hey if things don’t get much worse, then great!
If you’re worried you’ll be “let go,” do something about it now – it won’t prevent the axe, but it’ll make you less worried about its effects.
Bearing in mind that losing you job means (give or take the odd tiny benefit cheque) *no income* – do the following:
1. Use your existing income to stash at least 3 (preferably 6) months salary away in the bank as soon as possible, then work on nuking any debts with leftover money after that. If this means you lock yourself indoors and eat porridge for the next six months – think of it as training. Debt is the Big One. Now is not the time to have ANY debt other than a mortgage.
2. Make a prioritised “cut list” of things you can (hopefully temporarily) do practically without at short notice to minimise outgoings (subscriptions to things, club memberships etc.). Your aim is to cut out all fat. Keep the list updated together with notes on how to action it (numbers to call, addresses to write to, with account numbers to quote etc.). If the evil day arrives, activate the kill list immediately.
3. While compiling the list above, check when any contracts are up for renewal on things like broadband or mobile subs and switch to equivalent products that have short (preferably no) contract periods, even if they cost a bit more. If you need to, you can then drop them fast to save money.
3. Get income protection insurance if you’ve not got it already. This is essential if you have a mortgage. Bear in mind it may not pay out though (insurers are the worst kind of bastard).
4. Get your CV up to date – it’ll take a while to finesse it and you don’t want to be doing that in a panic (or in a state of depression) the week after you’ve lost your job.
Then sit back and relax knowing that if shit happens, you’re prepared.
so…the company told me on record they let 3 of 48 people go last week, which I decided not to write on. weird.
That’s right, Michael. 3 employees were let go. Not 30% of our workforce.
And, we’re hiring. Go figure.
do you think it is a good time to go to SV? since rents are getting cheaper now?
no
even for CISCO?
FuckedStartups.com is tracking this layoff, along with a few more.
Wikia.com was top heavy, no way they can sustain, they are in a saturated market.
The good news is that that this recession is not well understood. It’s greatly premature to say how long this will last or how bad it will truly be.
This means that it may not be as the 2nd Great Depression (but it is still pretty bad). That said, it will continue to get worse (the December consumer numbers will be terrible) until at least, February (the new president’s first major speech on the subject) and then it should start getting better for at least the Tech Industry.
Remember, capitalism runs on the greed of investors and the passion of entrepeneurs. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. :-)
So 3-4 people were laid off? That’s the news here?
I agree. This is completely non-news. 3 worker bees out of 48, big whoop. Shoot, if you sneeze too hard over at Yahoo 3 people drop out. This really doesn’t qualify. Wikia has always been run on the cheap so it should still have plenty of money in the bank to weather this out.
Non – news. TechCrunch is getting way too stupid these days!! Yawn!
Veoh just laid off almost a half of their employees!
This is not possible!!
It is the end of the world!
Now we should REALLY start panicking :)…
I’m bout to get fired too Trump style…lol
[Second try, to get past link-trap]
It’s been public for some time now that Wikia is struggling. They’ve had to become much more aggressive about pushing ads, and that’s alienated some of the digital-sharecroppers, I mean “communities”. See the column I wrote a little while ago:
http://www.guar...ul/31/wikipedia
Great quote: “Unfortunately, Google ads in the footer pay pennies a click, and nobody clicks”.
“Unfortunately, Google ads in the footer pay pennies a click, and nobody clicks”
Makes you wonder whether anybody clicks on Google’s ads on any other websites.
I seem to remember almost all the employees are offshore and may not even technically be employees. If that’s the case, hardly seems earth-shattering news to cut back a few contractors.
since last Friday (Oct 17, 2008) adsense users are reporting 30 to 35% drop in the ecpm (revenue for 1000 impressions) on a daily basis. It seems advertisers are not bidding high on adwords anymore. Hope the holiday season will change that.
Is my math bad, or is 10% of 43 = 4.3. Who gives a sh*t?
Has anyone done the math to figure out Wikia’s balance sheet? Best that I can estimate, I figure revenues might — MIGHT — be $12,000 a month more than expenses. That’s a lot of months to recoup $14,000,000.
This idea has always been terrible. Enough said. Get this project into the dead pool already so more room can be freed up for actually useful ventures.
Take actual numbers => Makes them into % values => Make a headline…
I remember the edge of the fall well from 99 and 2000. Another cycle is upon us.
Wikia Search is awesome. I just wish more people would realize that and start using it.