Wikia Search, a project created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales with the aim of creating a community-led search engine, has failed Wales has announced that Wikia search, which was once presented as a potential rival to Google, will be closing down only 15 months after it was launched.
Wales will refocus efforts on social network Wikia, which, in common with all Wiki projects, has a community-driven content approach. Even though Wikia has been one of the fastest growing community destinations with some reaching 3.76 million members in February (according to Nielsen) but that wasn’t enough for Wales to continue. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia Search was always intended to be a profit making business, with money coming from advertising. A difficult task in today’s economy.
In his interview with the BBC Mr Wales played up the role of users as editors but said there were no plans to allow them to claim a share in the revenue.
Wikia’s closure now creates doubts about the future of other similar search engines such as Chacha and Mahalo.
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