[Search-l] Wired Blog: Where Are The Announced Wikipedia Projects?

[Seth Finkelstein]

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/update_where_ar.html

Meanwhile, Jimmy Wales's Open Serving project that was supposed to
revolutionize user-generated content has quietly started to allow
users to create their sites, but it appears that this is an invite
only situation (an odd move considering Wikia's other open
participation projects).

In case you missed the news on Open Serving months ago, it is a wiki
platform that offers free bandwidth, free software tools, free
storage, Digg-like news voting, RSS feeds and allows the creator of a
site to keep 100 percent of the ad revenue. How this project will
generate enough revenue to sustain itself is unclear.

The catch might be buried in a fact that some users may be unaware of
unless they read the fine print: You won't have copyrights to any of
the content on Open Serving. Hmmm, another commercial DVD perhaps?

Also promised, but so far missing in action, is the Wikia Search
engine. Months ago, Wales announced it as a potential competitor to
Google, but with tools like Googlepedia around, it will be interesting
to see if Wales can offer a real competitive alternative to Google. If
the continued delays and dust-ups with competitors persist,
accomplishing such an ambitious feat is unlikely.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php