Next on the World Wide Wiki tour: Wikia

1

I’m here with Tristan Harris, intern at Wikia, and Gil Penchina, CEO at Wikia.

What’s Wikia? Well, it’s a sister company to Wikipedia. Gil says they have the same parents, founder of both is Jimmy Wales. It’s basically a great place to launch a Wiki around a cause. You know, like StarWars. Or, politics. Religion. Or, even, Rocketboom, who has a wiki there.

What’s different from JotSpot? Well, they don’t charge. But they aren’t aimed at enterprises. No spreadsheet tool embedded here, like JotSpot has. No, their entire mission is to get people who care about something to open up a wiki. No hate or porn sites allowed.

Gil showed me their traffic graph and it’s headed up with a slope steeper than KT22 at Squaw Valley. Steep. All without spending more than $6 on marketing (he said they paid $5 to get Google’s Analytics package which also costs them $.05 a month and that that investment had brought them tens of thousands of visitors. Now that’s a great ROPI (Return on Pennies Invested).

Anyway, yet another cool Wiki company. For my show I’m looking for a Wiki service and this one went to the top of the list because of the philosophy behind the company that I learned about from Gil and Tristan.

How did I meet Tristan, by the way? He goes to Stanford. So do the interns who work at PodTech — they are part of the Mayfield Scholars program which, I’m learning, is an important network in Silicon Valley. Treat your interns well!!! They tend to tell the truth about how good your company is because they don’t have a long-term attachment. Tristan was praising Wikia to me, so I guess they are doing all right!

Update: one good use of Wikia is the World Wikia Wiki, which is a travel wiki. You can find hotels with WiFi and a lot more there.

15 thoughts on “Next on the World Wide Wiki tour: Wikia”

  1. Great timing on a posting about Wikia - they had some connectivity and caching issues today. It should be fixed by now; they’re dilligent and respond pretty quickly.

    It’s interesting to see a third-party review of the company. I, too, really like this company.

  2. Great timing on a posting about Wikia - they had some connectivity and caching issues today. It should be fixed by now; they’re dilligent and respond pretty quickly.

    It’s interesting to see a third-party review of the company. I, too, really like this company.

  7. Pingback: Naik’s News » Next on the World Wide Wiki tour: Wikia

  12. Heheh! Tech froth served up daily! Sounds like a good subhead for a videoblog. ;-)

    But, seriously, this company isn’t spending much (Gil doesn’t take a salary, they aren’t paying any rent yet, they don’t even buy their own business cards) and they have a growing traffic curve that I appreciate. And a good philosophy. They are worth some froth, methinks.

  13. Heheh! Tech froth served up daily! Sounds like a good subhead for a videoblog. ;-)

    But, seriously, this company isn’t spending much (Gil doesn’t take a salary, they aren’t paying any rent yet, they don’t even buy their own business cards) and they have a growing traffic curve that I appreciate. And a good philosophy. They are worth some froth, methinks.

  14. Well back to work and back to the full-brew froth, eh? The irony of an ‘anti-wisdom of the crowds’ post with a ‘wiki’ post nearly back to back is so ironically ironic.

    Well, I notice things like that. ;)

  15. Well back to work and back to the full-brew froth, eh? The irony of an ‘anti-wisdom of the crowds’ post with a ‘wiki’ post nearly back to back is so ironically ironic.

    Well, I notice things like that. ;)

Comments are closed.