startups

From the man who brought us Wikipedia, comes Wikia: an open source search engine, backed by a reported $14 million dollars of venture funding.

Wikia, more or less, is attempting to wrangle the same forces that chiseled Wikiapedia into future world history books, and apply them to a for-profit search engine. A really unsexy way to describe Wikia's idea in reality is this:

Wikia will use a traditional search algorithms to produce a (primitive) "first draft" of any given search result. This first draft's rankings will be open to the public for re-ranking (and moderation). At first, the results will suck, but after the project reaches a critical mass, and has an active user base comparable to Wikipedia's -- guarding and improving the quality of results -- the search engine will blast off into the galaxy, leaving Google orbiting the moon.  

"Of all the monsters that fill the nightmares of our folklore, none terrify more than werewolves, because they transform unexpectedly from the familiar into horrors. For these, one seeks bullets of silver that can magically lay them to rest.