My respect for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales just quadrupled. Not only is Wikipedia a great resource, and MediaWiki a wonderful and (fairly) easy to use wiki open source software, but now his commercial company is giving away wiki hosting for free. I just love open source, so Jimmy Wales is my hero of the day indeed!
Wikia’s new hosted wiki service is said to only be the beginning, but I’ll settle for it for now. Under the brand Openserving the folks at Wikia will offer free wiki hosting, something others already are doing around the web. The thing is, while you’ll have to share your ad revenue with just about any other option out there, Wikia gives it all to you. For free.
I’ll say that again: All ad revenue goes to you, and the wiki hosting is free.
So where do Wikia make money? On backlinks, apparently, since they want you to put up relative links to the main Wikia site, where they can earn their own advertising revenue. But don’t just link ‘em, only do it when it’s actually relevant and worth doing to the reader. How’s that for believing in your own content, huh?
Openserving hasn’t opened yet, but there’s a tour to take a look at. I bet a lot of wiki hosting companies are crying in dark corners at the moment.
What’s next? This is from the Openserving site:
Openserving extends the essence of the open source model — free software and content — to all aspects of web-based computing.
Hat tip: ZDNet UK
Originally posted on December 12, 2006 @ 5:47 am