"Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions"

Wikia search is releasing "Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions" ("WISE"):

WISE -- "Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions" -- is Wikia Search's application framework. WISE makes it easy for website owners and developers to provide Wikia Search users with search results enhanced by the data available across the Web.

There is a problem with that paragraph, in the words "Wikia Search users". To a good appproximation, there aren't any. It's a long way from buying Jimbo his jet.

In a way, it's pretty funny. Wikia Search has no traffic and no quality results. Therefore, ask partners to provide the quality results - in the guise of reaching the audience that isn't there! I've got to say, it's a neat search engine twist on the strategy of digital sharecropping sites.

Note the press release contains this revealing portion:

"Here at Last.fm we consider Wikipedia to be one of the most pioneering community-driven websites of the last 10 years, so we're thrilled to be a part of Jimmy's new venture," said Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder.

I don't make this up. There's the benefit in a nutshell that Wikia the for-profit venture capital backed startup company obtains from Wikipedia the famous non-profit site.

My recent Guardian column on Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia and advertising is particulary relevant here:

"It's informative to observe how long Wales has been pursuing a strategy of selling advertising around other people's work."

[Checking, my blog post which used to rank highly on a search for his name has been user-deleted from those Wikia Search results (it's greyed-out a bit down the page as a user-deleted item). But those search results are currently full of "Valleywag.com" posts, which he may not consider an improvement]

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)