Wikia is raising $11 million to support its massive network of pop culture wikis, where people can collaboratively publish video game, entertainment, and lifestyle content and form communities around shared interests.
Wikia’s mission is threefold. It is designed to unloose the power of knowledge as influence, enable personal and collective creativity, and distribute rich, original content. Although founded by the creators of Wikipedia, Wikia is a separate business dedicated specifically to lifestyle topics and pop culture. And unlike Wikipedia, Wikia is a for-profit enterprise that makes money off advertising.
The platform powers over 200,000 wikis with millions of pages of content. The Wikia Video Games hub is the largest network of gaming sites in the world. It contains more than 65,000 game wikis and 2.48 million pages of content. The company cites The Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Fallout, and Runescape as the most trafficked titles. The entertainment section is also growing fast, with “super communities” coming together around A Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games.
Today, alongside closing an $11 million deal, Wikia announced that the forum feature is now available, which will facilitate discussion on the sites. The investors on the fielding are Jeffrey Blackburn of Amazon, which led Wikia’s Series B of $10 million in 2006. Also listed are previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. Angel investors in Wikia include major Silicon Valley names like Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Reed Hastings, and Mitch Kapor.
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This brings Wikia’s funding to $25 million. Wikia is based in San Francisco. Read the SEC filing.
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