Wikia

Fandom,[a] also known as Wikia (commonly before October 2016), is an American-made wiki hosting service and domain operated by Fandom, Inc. (formerly known as Wikia, Inc.), a for-profit Delaware company founded in October 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. As of 2018, it is headed by Perkins Miller as CEO.[8][9] Fandom uses MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software used by Wikipedia. Fandom, Inc. derives its income from advertising and sold content, publishing most user-provided text under copyleft licenses.[10] The company also runs the associated Fandom editorial project, offering pop-culture, and gaming news.[11]

Most Fandom wikis are hosted under the domain fandom.com, but some, especially those that focus on subjects other than media franchises, are hosted under wikia.org.

History 2004–2009: Early days and growth

Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004 at 23:50:49 (UTC) under the name Wikicities (which invited comparisons to GeoCities),[12] by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley Starling—respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. The name of the project was changed to Wikia on March 27, 2006.[13] In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital.[14] Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million in Series B funding.[15]

By September 2006, it had approximately 1,500 wikis in 48 languages.[16] Over time, Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis such as LyricWiki, Nukapedia, Uncyclopedia, and WoWWiki.[17] Gil Penchina described Wikia early on as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopedia.[18] The material has also been described as informal, and often bordering on entertainment, allowing the importing of maps, YouTube videos, and other non-traditional wiki material.[19] 2010–2015: New management

By 2010, wikis could be created in 188 different languages.[10] In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote, would replace Penchina as CEO.[20] On February 8, 2012, co-founder Beesley Starling announced she was leaving Wikia to launch a startup called ChalkDrop.com.[21] 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.[22] Another $15 million was raised in August 2014 for Series D funding, with investors Digital Garage, Amazon, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners. The total raised at this point was $39.8 million.[23][24]

On March 4, 2015, Wikia announced its appointment of Walker Jacobs, who was the former Executive Vice-President of Turner Broadcasting System, to the new position of Chief Operating Officer.[25] In December 2015, Wikia launched the Fan Contributor Program. 2016–2018: Fandom brand

On January 25, 2016, Wikia launched a new entertainment news site named Fandom.[26] On September 26, 2016, Wikia announced that Wikia.com would be renamed "Fandom powered by Wikia" on October 4, 2016, to better associate themselves with the Fandom website. Wikia, Inc. would remain under its current name. At the time, the homepage of Wikia.com was moved to wikia.com/fandom.[7]

On December 4, 2016, Wikia announced the hiring of Dorth Raphaely to be their Chief Content Officer. Previously Raphaely had worked at Bleacher Report as their General Manager.[27] In mid-2018, following an investment by private equity firm TPG Capital,[28] Craig Palmer was replaced by Andrew Doyle who assumed the role of Interim CEO.[9]

On August 15, 2018, Wikia announced it would fully change its domain name into fandom.com in early 2019.[29] Various Wikis were tested with the new domain during 2018, with Wikia confirming that the process would be completed by February 4, 2019, with the exception of wikis that focused on "more serious topics", which would instead have their domains changed to wikia.org instead of fandom.com.[30] The process was delayed by a few weeks due to issues with Google adverts, but was properly completed on February 22, 2019. 2018–present: new acquisitions

On July 2, 2018, it was announced that Fandom had purchased Screen Junkies from Defy Media.[31]

On December 12, 2018, Wikia announced that they had acquired the media assets of Curse LLC, including wiki services Gamepedia, D&D Beyond, Futhead, Muthead, and Straw Poll.[32]

On June 20, 2019, Wikia announced that it would rewrite its core platform in order to use a newer version of MediaWiki software.[33] Wikia previously used a modified build of MediaWiki based on version 1.19, which was outdated by several years.

On March 12, 2020, Fandom announced that all of its wikis created after March 11 would be on the Unified Community Platform (UCP).[34][35]

On November 4, 2020, Fandom announced that it will migrate all Gamepedia wikis to a fandom.com domain.[36]