Wikia Gaming Launches With 250,000 Articles

I love Wikia - CEO Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, says he works harder than anyone in Silicon Valley at building his startup. I routinely point out to him that his startup doesn’t actually do anything - their wiki software is based on the open source MediaWiki project, Google, Looksmart and FM Publishing handle all the revenue via ad sales, and their users create every drop of content on the site. All he has to do is make sure the lights stay on (to be fair, Wikia has made substantial contributions to MediaWiki).

Anyway, back to the news: Wikia is launching Wikia Gaming tonight, a collection of video game focused wikis. The sites contain over 250,000 articles on games already, on all major platforms. The World of Warcraft site is the largest single wiki, with 43,000 articles.

Wikia, which has raised $14 million from Bessemer and Amazon, claims a quarter billion monthly page views. 800,000 articles on 3,000 topics have been created and edited by over 200,000 registered users in 70 languages.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join Digg

Video sharing site MetaCafe launched a new area of their site today - it uses the Digg API to show the most popular MetaCafe videos.

Viewers can sort by most dugg, highest rated, most discussed, most viewed, etc. Only Metacafe videos are shown.

Digg’s video channel and Metacafe overlap somewhat, particularly for people who just want to quickly find and browse interesting videos. That makes this pairing somewhat unlikely - I would have expected Metacafe to simply build their own Digg-like voting system or use Pligg’s open source software (see VideoSift’s similar functionality, which was recently in the news). The fact that they are working with Digg shows that they are willing to hitch their brand to that shooting star, damn the competitive angle.

Metacafe released a press release this afternoon on the new functionality. Notably absent from the release was Digg, who did not jointly release it, or provide a quote. (Update - see comment #2 below).

TechCrunch Reader Polls

A little while ago, Fred Wilson over at A VC posted a reader poll in which he asked his readers to identify themselves by their occupation. We thought this was a cool idea so we’ve decided to run our own polls below.

We have provided an occupation poll that is a near facsimile of Wilson’s. Further down, we have placed a couple of polls that address other topics.

Thanks for taking a few seconds to fill these out - the results should be interesting!
Which of the following labels best describes your occupation?

* Startup founder
* Established company staff
* Student
* Other
* Startup staff
* Established company founder
* Educator or academic
* Journalist (Traditional or Citizen)
* Research scientist
* Venture capital firm staff
* Venture capital firm partner
* Angel investor
* Hedge fund staff
* Hedge fund partner
* Buyout fund staff
* Buyout fund partner

View Results
How often do you read TechCrunch?

* Daily
* A few times per week
* Hourly
* Once per week
* Every other day
* A few times per season or less
* Every other week
* Once per month

View Results
Do you smile or grumble when TechCrunch covers Facebook news?

* Grumble
* Smile

View Results

Amazon Fresh Shopping Bag Spotted In The Wild

Finally, pictures are starting to come in of Amazon Fresh, the new Webvan-like grocery delivery service that launched in Seattle last month. What I’d really like to see is a review of the service by someone who lives in Seattle. And a picture of the delivery van everyone keeps spotting. Or even better, just video the whole delivery experience. I have very fond memories of Webvan and I can’t wait until this thing hits silicon valley. I’ll never have to leave my computer again.

Update: Here’s the truck - photo credit to Jeff Sandquist:

• Sphere It
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Posted in Company & Product Profiles |

ICCARUS: Three Dimensional Data Visualization

ICCARUS is a new service created by social music and video recommendations startup Scouta. It creates a three dimensional visualization of the data behind a social networking or related website. ICCARUS also shows the social network between members, the memberships of groups, and the links between members and the content they enjoy. Navigate by clicking on points of interest, or searched using commands. Results are dynamic and are delivered in real time, providing an instant visual representation of the given network

The data is fetched via TurboGears and uses the GFX library to create the visual effects.

ICCARUS was launched Wednesday at Webjam Perth and won first place from a field of around 15 demonstrating startups. I spoke with Scouta CEO Richard Giles at the WA Web Awards Friday and he told me that the feedback on ICCARUS had been strong. Scouta plans on further refining ICCARUS with a possibility of providing the service to the public either later this year or early 2008.

The screencast above doesn’t do the service full justice, but it’s enough to give some idea of what it is capable of.