About

Wikia (formerly Wikicities, website itself known as Fandom powered by Wikia)^[1] is a free wiki hosting service. The site is free of charge, for-profit, deriving its income from advertising and sold content, publishing most user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software, MediaWiki.

History

Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004, under the name "Wikicities" (which invited comparisons to GeoCities), but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006. In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital. Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million[citation needed] in Series B funding.

By July 2007, it had more than 3,000 wikis in more than 50 languages. Over time Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia, such as LyricWiki, The Vault, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki. Gil Penchina described Wikia early on as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopedia. The material has also been described as informal, and often bordering on entertainment, allowing the importing of maps, YouTube videos, and other non-traditional wiki material.

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External References