Wikia - History

History

Wikia spent over a year going by the name "Wikicities" (which invited comparisons to GeoCities), but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006, saying that "the name Wikicities has often caused confusion, with many people believing it was a site for city guides rather than wikis about any topic." In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital. Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million in Series B funding, with Senior VP of Business Development Jeff Blackburn joining the company board.

In November 2006, Wikia claimed to have spent only $5.74 on marketing, while generating 40 to 50 million page views. The company later spent $2 million to purchase ArmchairGM, a sports forum and wiki, previously an independently hosted site.

Wikia announced the creation of its hundredth wiki on February 3, 2005. As of July 2007, it had over 3,000 wikis in over 50 languages. Wikia's growth stems not only from wikis founded on Wikia, but also from incorporating formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia over time, such as LyricWiki, The Vault, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki.

On April 7, 2010, Wikia announced the creation of its 100,000th wiki. In May 2010, the company offered the removal of external ads (though not internal promotions) for a fee, but only for wikis with fewer than 20,000 page-views per month. 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.