February 17, 2010
Answers from Wikia lets anyone make Q/A site
New Wikia site lets experts in a field create a niche question and answers community
Wikia, a free Web hosting service for wikis, is launching a new niche site called Answers from Wikia, which gives anyone the tools to launch their own question and answers site.
Designed to let anybody, experienced with Web design or not, create a Q/A site, Wikia intends for users to create specific niche communities, targeted at a small cross-section of the Web audience.
"Start a new community and be the expert on your topic, whether it's fraggle rock, regular expressions or Manolo Blahnik," reads the introductory blurb on the new site. "Answers from Wikia is a great way to bring together the detail of a question and answer site with the warm, cosy feeling of being surrounded by people who are passionate about the same thing that you are. And since you're the founder, you can say what goes on your own site."
Early last year, Wikia launched a very similar site called Wikianswers, where users can ask questions in the community. Wikianswers competes with Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers (a different site from the first), two other popular sites where people can ask the community just about anything.
Though Wikianswers doesn't require users to register to ask or answer questions, Answers from Wikia will require registration since the user who creates the site will be responsible for management of the community.
Wikia, which claims more than 12 million monthly US visitors, recently surpassed IGN as the number one domestic destination for news and information about games, according to data from Quantcast.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley in 2004 founded Wikia, which achieved profitability in September 2009.
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Wikia is a community destination supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. We currently support over 5500 communities in more than 70 languages. Part of the free culture movement, Wikia content is released under a free content license and operates on the Open Source MediaWiki software. Explore our existing communities or start a new one.Wikia, Inc.
Wikia is operated by Wikia, Inc. Wikia has offices in San Mateo and New York in the US, and in Poznań in Poland. Remote staff are located in Chile, England, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and also in other locations in Poland and the US. Wikia's staff members have over 60 years Wikipedia experience among them.
Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley in 2004. The company is incorporated in Delaware. Gil Penchina became Wikia's CEO in June 2006, at the same time the company moved its headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Menlo Park and later to San Mateo in California. A new office was launched in Poznan, Poland in September 2006 and Wikia moved out of St. Petersburg at the end of 2006. The New York office opened when Wikia acquired ArmchairGM in December 2006. Wikia has received two rounds of investment; in March 2006 from Bessemer Venture Partners and in December 2006 from Amazon.com.
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