Wikia’s ArmchairGM: Wiki Meets Social Network

Wikia, a for profit wiki site created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, acquired ArmchairGM for $2 million last year and got into the sports fan business.

The site has been slowly rolling out new features. Wikia CEO Gil Penchina described it to me as “Wiki 2.0″ - because it combines the best features of open source wiki software with social networking features like adding friends, building a profile, meeting new people, create groups, etc. ArmchairGM also allows users to add “foes” in addition to friends, since a lot of sports rivalries are generated on the site.

The site also has a unique user generated virtual gift product. Unlike other social networks, users create the gifts themselves by uploading images. Other users can then use those gifts, too, and some become quite popular.

Wikis and social networks don’t exactly mix well. Parts of the network, like user profiles, need to be locked down so that only the owner can edit them. Other parts of the site remain wide open and allow anyone to edit.

And its growing, fairly rapidly. ArmchairGM alone is now at 1 million monthly page views. Wikia has also rolled out the ArmchairGM software for ten other verticals not included in that page view count - see, for example, Foodie, Gaming, and Politics. The company recently brought in the NFL as a site-wide sponsor.

Parent company Wikia continues to grow rapidly, says Penchina. They had 250 million page views in August.

Real Time Coverage Of Apple Announcements

Hop on over to CrunchGear to see the real time coverage of the special Apple press event today that started at 10 am PST. Lots of new iPod news, and a make-your-own ringtone tool in iTunes. And they always save the best stuff for last.

Ladies Rejoice, TheFind.com Acquires Glimpse

Shopping search engine startup TheFind has acquired the high-fashion shopping site Glimpse.com for an undisclosed amount. It’s an early deal for Glimpse, which just launched earlier this year.

TheFind is a comparison shopping search engine that crawls many shopping sites across the internet (190 million products at over 500,000 stores). Other shopping sites often charge for the privilege of getting listed in engines like Shopping.com. This keeps the results page clean of nonsensical results while generating some extra revenue.

The impetus for the deal was to increase their offering targeted to the female market. TheFind will be powering the shopping search for Glimpse.com, enabling the site to cover more online boutiques, specialty fashion retailers, and brand stores.

TheFind was founded in 2003 and launched their main search site last year after running a of their technology on FatLens.com. They are funded by two rounds of financing totaling $23 million from Bain Capital, Redpoint, and Lightspeed Ventures.