Wikia search, a user generated search results project started by jimmy wales who wanted to bring wikipedia approach to improve search, is closing down.
Wikia is announcing on Tuesday that it is closing the Wikia Search product. The service was intended to be a user-generated search engine, through which users could influence the rankings of results for all other users.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia and driving force behind Wikia Search, fully expected the development of Wikia Search to be a “long-term project.” The current economy, however, has forced him to “reassess everything,” and “do what we need to do to get to profitabililty.”
Wikia Search was not on the right trajectory. “This one is too far away,” he said. “It was going to take at least a another year to two before it’s usable by the public, and we can’t afford that right now.”
Even given a generous time frame for success, Wikia Search was not making its numbers. With only 10,000 unique users a month over the past six months, Wales said, it was hard to justify the resources being put into it. Two full-time employees will lose their jobs as the project is shuttered.