Jimmy Wales announced a few days ago, the closure of Wikia Search due to the ongoing economic recession. Wikia Search was designed with the primary purpose to allow users determine the rankings of sites and pages for all other users.
Wales summed up the decision like this,
Wikia has just relaunched an answers site called Wikianswers, which has drawn a bit of controversy over its name. There is another site called Wiki Answers, which was once called FAQFarm and is now owned by Answers.com.
Wikia may not be doing so well. Many other companies are following the same path, of course, but a new rumor has it that some layoffs have occurred and 30 percent of Wikia's workforce is now eligible for unemployment benefits.
UPDATE 4/9/08: Seems there was some confusion sparked by this piece, which is, at best, a muddled, meandering, word-labyrinth posing as an unconventional, smart-alecky essay on web journalism/blogging. That's okay, any reader would find himself in good company lost amid my verbose effluvia. For crying out loud, I used a word like "bildungsroman" and made references not just to Roman mythology but also to an obscure Persian king 3,500 years dead.
I’m generally in favour of bashing those who need to be bashed, and I definitely like taking the wind out of the Web 2.0 windbags (you know who you are), but I think the blogosphere is being a little hard on Wikia Search. Mike Arrington says that it’s a letdown, Allen Stern at Centernetworks
Nobody's sure what to expect from Wikia Search, perhaps even its founder. Even for just an alpha launch, the search critics are generally unimpressed, making one wonder just how long Jimmy Wales will have to prove his concept.
The ambitious project by Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, dubbed a Google challenger in search, elicited a tepid response from reviewers.
Jimmy Wales and Wikia Search may be getting all the press this week, but there are resources out there you may not know.
The web levels the playing field, allowing individuals to compete with larger corporations, largely through the smaller players making dirt public and launching viral marketing campaigns around issues. Because there is a publisher publishing every opinion and angle, it is easy to discount just about everything, especially attempts for new market participants to become remarkable.
I was watching the interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Om Malik’s show on Revision3, because I’m always interested in what Jimmy is up to, and he mentioned a site called ArmchairGM, which I don’t recall hearing about before — or at least paying much attention to.
Om was talking about how he wanted a combination of his blog and a wiki, so that his community could contribute and get involved more, and Jimmy said he saw ArmchairGM as being close to that kind of thing.
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