Using the same technology and user-generated publishing model, Wikipedia founders are launching three new online magazines that cover news and gossip, which can be edited by anybody.
The company is called Wikia, which contrary to their popular Wikipedia, will be for profit. The founders say that this is just the beginning of a large presence they are planning on a large amount of niche topics. In the months ahead there will be a lot more like this they said.
There will be monetization through online ads, but those that contribute won't be compensated; we'll see how they feel about that, or if they continue working like they did on the Wikipedia site, which was offered for free, without advertising.
The first three sites will have content on Entertainment, Politics and local U.S. areas where people can add news related to their localities.
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t this time the entertainment site is more of a redirector to existing articles published by known companies; it remains to be seen if anything original comes out of it.
The politics site is a little more lively and original with conspiracy theories and pet interests people want to put forth. It also includes regular stuff like the upcoming 2008 presidential election.
Similar to Wikipedia, users will police themselves to ensure that entries are accurate. There will also be a voting mechanism in place that will decide who goes to the front page depending on the number of votes they receive.
Wikia recently bought ArmchairGm, a site almost the same as the others, but focused on sports instead. "We learned a lot about enthusiastic fans and communities as we built ArmchairGM," said Dan Lewis, co-founder of ArmchairGM and vice-president of business development at Wikia.
The three new sites, and the others soon-to-come, look like they will be built upon the model tested out by ArmchairGM.
There's not too much about this that is of interest to me. I can see the value in Wikipedia, in that it offers insights and knowledge gathered from all over about numerous subjects we may have never had an idea about. But do people really have the time to freely interact and contribute to these new sites? Time will tell. Anybody out there see any value in this?
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