Webanalyticsbook made it in to the Jimmy Whales event that I got locked out of because I was 15 minutes late and the guard downstairs would not let me go in.
I wasn't there, so I can't tell you how it went, but, judging from Webanalyticsbook's account - I should have been there. Oh well - read Webanalyticsbook to get the gist - and by the way, I like his blog too.
"…After listening to him, I was surprised about his knowledge. He is really smart and has deep knowledge of what is going on in the internet world. Still I believe his search engine will never take off and compete seriously with Google or other major engines."
Well…. I don't think Wikia is built yet - it's blueprint right now (I was on the message board for a while but unsubscribed because I was getting a ton of emails from everyone replying on the list and I did not have time to read them all). But if Jimmy Whales is a dreamer - Wikia is his dream.
Maybe it's ok to have a dream - you never know - it might take on a life of it's own.
Ok, from the sounds of it (and I hope Jimmy Whales asks me to interview him - hopefully in person - if he ever reads this) what will make Wikia succeed is, more or less, what made Google succeed - a very easy way to get (and enter) information - in other words - an INTERFACE.
He needs the right interface for Wikia to succeed - to make it easy for the collaboration he envisions to make Wikia work. He also needs for his servers to be FAST - Google understood that - people have very low attention span now - it must be SIMPLE and it must be FAST and it must be EASY and RELIABLE. If he has those 4 things - and enough buzz, and some MONEY ….he may succeed.
But getting to that is going to be hard - but not impossible. After all, dreams are the fuel of great art, and I think, of great search engines.
And let's not forget that Google's simple interface, was rumored to come out of the creator's lack of knowledge or interest in HTML - in other words, the design "happened" because it seemed like the most logical, simple way to create an uncluttered Search Interface (that was darn FAST and GOOD for it's time).
So, if Wikia copied that - but 10 years later - why not? Go for it.
Sorry I missed the Jimmy Whales talk but Webanalyticsbook has it covered - read his blog.
