New Wiki Search Engine Hardly a Splash

With Fewer Results and Proprietary Questions, Wales Still Defends His Newest Search Engine as Being Full of Potential. So? Prove It.

You almost have to have a good dose of P. T. Barnum mixed with the marketing skill of William Randolph Hearst these days on the Internet. Jimmy Wales, the democratic guru of information and sharing the wealth (information that is, not money) has made a lot of promises about his new Wikia. "I’m a big believer in ‘release early, release often,’ so things are going to change a lot." says Wales. Actually when you think of it, Wiki world is at heart the ideal user based social center of the Web. It can be edited and enriched by the same people for whom it is intended. Wikia too, is an example of this same user participation. Wikia is branded as a "social" search engine, significantly different from the big names in search, such as Google and Ask.com. Wikia is hoping that the open and participatory model will make Search Wikia the place to go for search results of higher quality.

Still, the results now are turning people away, according to TechCrunch (Michael Arrington), who cites the low numbers of search results when used. Granted, it is a young pup on the market. But it shall have to grow a lot in the coming months to be able to run with the pack. Are people really even going to think Wikia when the search. Already Google is in the lexicon of slang. When someone wants an answer they "Google it."

The advantage may come in its flexibility. Google is a fixed structure, but by its very nature wiki applications can be altered in ways that others cannot. It is, (Wikia) that is billed as being far more user friendly. Wales has a big promise to keep on this one. If he fails, however, the worst that can be said is that Google will have to work a little harder for its user dollar.

Any thoughts?


Italicized portions of this post were borrowed from an article by Woody Evans titled: "We Find It All: Wikia’s New Social Search Engine"

Here is the link to the story:

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=40606

Try Wikia out:

http://www.wikia.com/