2004 ; 11 years ago 2004 10 18 headquarters san francisco california u.s. founder s jimmy wales angela beesley starling president jimmy wales ceo craig palmer products wiki hosting wiki topic discussion forums data research 1 private focus group and early marketing 2 api 3 digital pop culture news magazine 4 employees 300 2016 slogan s the home of fandom website www.wikia.com written in php alexa rank 102 september 2016 update 5 type of site wiki hosting service advertising direct and advertising networks registration optional available in multilingual launched october 18 2004 ; 11 years ago 2004 10 18 as wikicities current status active wikia formerly wikicities website itself known as fandom powered by wikia 6 is a free wiki hosting service . the site is free of charge 7 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 . its operator wikia inc. is a for profit delaware company founded in late 2004 8 by jimmy wales and angela beesley starling respectively chairman emeritus and advisory board member of the wikimedia foundation and headed by craig palmer as ceo . 9 wikia also powers the associated fandom site an editorial project offering pop culture and gaming news . 10 contents 1 history 2 services and features 2.1 entertainment news magazine 2.2 private marketing 2.3 wiki partnerships 2.4 questions and answers site 2.5 openserving 2.6 armchairgm 2.7 search engines 3 controversy 3.1 domain and skin assimilation 3.2 relationship with wikipedia 4 wikia inc. 5 see also 6 notes 7 references 8 external links history edit wikia was launched on october 18 2004 under the name wikicities which invited comparisons to geocities 11 but changed its name to wikia on march 27 2006 . 12 in the month before the move wikia announced a us 4 million venture capital investment from bessemer venture partners and first round capital . 13 nine months later amazon.com invested us 10 million in series b funding . citation needed by july 2007 it had more than 3 000 wikis in more than 50 languages . 14 over time wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis that joined wikia such as lyricwiki the vault uncyclopedia and wowwiki . 15 gil penchina described wikia early on as the rest of the library and magazine rack to wikipedia s encyclopaedia . 16 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 . 17 by 2010 wikias were able to be created in 188 different languages . 7 in october 2011 wikia announced that craig palmer the former ceo of gracenote would replace penchina as ceo . 9 on february 8 2012 co founder beesley starling announced she was leaving wikia to launch a startup called chalkdrop.com . 18 at the end of november 2012 it was announced that wikia had raised another us 10.8 million in series c funding from institutional venture partners and previous investors bessemer ventures partners and amazon.com . 19 another 15 million was raised in august 2014 for series d funding with investors digital garage amazon bessemer venture partners and institutional venture partners . the total raised at this point was 39.8 million . 20 21 on march 4 2015 wikia announced its appointment of walker jacobs who was the former executive vice president of turner broadcasting system to the new position of chief operating officer . 22 in december 2015 wikia launched the fan contributor program . on january 25 2016 wikia launched a new entertainment news site named fandom . 23 on september 26 2016 wikia announced that wikia.com would be renamed fandom powered by wikia on october 4 2016 to better associate themselves with the fandom website . wikia inc. would remain under its current name . 24 services and features edit wikia communities consist of online encyclopedias each one specialized in a particular subject or theme . although wikia allows almost anything to be the main focus of a wiki the most common interest of wikia internauts is in popular fiction franchises of books films games and other media due to the considerable limitation of such detailed information by wikipedia s notability policies . the main purpose of articles in a wikia community is to cover information and discussion on a particular topic in a much greater and more comprehensive detail level than can be found on wikipedia articles . 25 for example a minor character in undertale may have its own article on the undertale wikia whereas the character may not be considered notable enough for a wikipedia page . also the writing style is mostly directed to those familiar with specific vocabulary and terminology rather than to the lay and general public of wikipedia . other examples of content that is generally considered beyond the scope of information of wikipedia articles includes wikia information about video games and related video game topics detailed instructions gameplay details plot details and so forth . gameplay concepts can also have their own articles . wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view rather than the neutral pov that is required by wikipedia although npov is a local policy on many wikia communities . citation needed wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license ; 26 most use the creative commons attribution sharealike license although memory alpha and uncyclopedia use a noncommercial variant and some use the gnu free documentation license . nb 1 27 wikia s terms of use forbid hate speech libel pornography or copyright infringement . material is allowed as long as the added material does not duplicate wikimedia foundation projects . 28 the wikia file store as of june 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on ssd . 29 as of august 2015 wikia uses a heavily modified version 30 of mediawiki software based on the version 1.19 31 of mediawiki which was officially marked as obsolete in may 2015 . 32 it has more than 250 extensions installed 31 most of them created by their staff of developers to add social features like blogs chat badges forums and multimedia 33 but also remove features like advanced user options 34 35 or skins other than their default custom skin and monobook available only for personal use 36 which are often used by advanced users but that new users may find confusing . entertainment news magazine edit in 2016 wikia launched fandom an online entertainment news magazine . the program utilizes volunteer contributors called fan contributors 37 to produce news style articles working alongside an editorial team employed by wikia . in contrast to the blogging feature of individual wiki communities fandom focuses on pop culture and fan topics such as video games movies and television shows . the project features fan opinion interviews with property creators reviews and how to guides . fandom also includes videos and specific news coverage sponsored or paid for by a property creator to promote their property . private marketing edit wikia currently runs the wikia fan studio a private platform that allows property creators to give early exposure to their product to a select group of wikia users . all participants remain anonymous and are required to sign a non disclosure agreement to keep early access information confidential . fan studio features properties such as testing for games early releases of television episodes a chapter of a book etc. the purpose is to create an environment to market a property to a demographic who immensely enjoys pop culture topics collect feedback and gauge interest of the topic on the internet . wiki partnerships edit wikia has created several official partnerships to create wikis vetted by the corporation as being the official encyclopedia or wiki of a property . in 2014 wikia partnered with roddenberry enterprises to create the trek initiative a wikia hosted wiki community site that features video interviews promotions and other material about stark trek to celebrate its 50th anniversary . 38 in 2013 wikia partned with soe now called daybreak games to create official wikis for several of their games such as free realms planetside 2 39 and the everquest franchise . wikia made similar partnerships with 2k games during the launch of civilization beyond earth 40 and warner bros interactive for shadow of mordor 41 questions and answers site edit in january 2009 the company created a question and answer website named wikianswers . 42 in march 2010 wikia re launched answers from wikia where users could create topic specialized knowledge market wikis based upon wikia s own wikianswers subdomain . 43 openserving edit openserving was a short lived web publishing project owned by wikia founded on december 12 2006 44 45 and abandoned unannounced in january 2008 . 46 like wikia openserving was to offer free wiki hosting but it would differ in that each wiki s founder would retain any revenue gained from advertising on the site . 44 47 48 openserving used a modified version of the wikimedia foundation s mediawiki software created by armchairgm but was intended to branch out to other open source packages . 44 49 according to wikia co founder and chairman jimmy wales the openserving site received several thousand applications in january 2007 . 50 however after a year no sites had been launched under the openserving banner . 46 armchairgm edit armchairgm was a sports forum and wiki site created by aaron wright dan lewis robert lefkowitz and developer david pean . launched in early 2006 the site was initially us based but sought to improve its links to sports associated with britain over its first year . its mediawiki based software included a digg style article voting mechanism blog like comment forms with thumbs up down user feedback and the ability to write multiple types of posts news opinions or locker room discussion entries . citation needed in late 2006 the site was bought by wikia for 2 million . 51 after the purchase was made the former owners applied armchairgm s architecture to other wikia sites . citation needed from september 2010 to february 2011 wikia absorbed the site s encyclopedia articles and blanked all of its old blog entries effectively discontinuing armchairgm in its original form . citation needed search engines edit wikia inc. initially proposed creating a copyleft search engine ; the software but not the site was named wikiasari by a november 2004 naming contest . nb 2 the proposal became inactive in 2005 . citation needed the public alpha of wikia search web search engine was launched on january 7 2008 citation needed from the usshc underground data center . 52 this roll out version of the search interface was roundly panned by reviewers in technology media . 53 the project was ended in march 2009 . 54 late in 2009 a new search engine was established to index and display results from all sites hosted on wikia . citation needed controversy edit wikia communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements or advertising in the body text area . 55 there is no easy way for individual communities to switch to conventional paid hosting as wikia usually owns the relevant domain names . if a community leaves wikia for new hosting the company typically continues to operate the abandoned wiki using its original name and content adversely affecting the new wiki s search rankings for advertising revenue . 56 domain and skin assimilation edit wikia has sometimes expanded by acquiring an existing wiki s domain name user lists and databases from a founder or co founder in return for money and stock options . 57 the original wiki is then shut down without consulting its editors or wider community and the domain redirected to wikia s version of the project . in the case of the acquisitions of uncyclopedia.org