My post speculated on whether the Wikipedia boss was looking at creating a Facebook competitor or some hybrid search/social networking product (whatever that may be). The speculation was based on a screenshot Wales briefly showed us at the Johannesburg event on Tuesday. My fingers weren’t quick enough, but co-blogger Nic Haralambous, who was sitting near me, got the shot.
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There has also been quite a bit of speculation about Wales’ stated intentions to create a new search engine under his company Wikia, which is a for-profit operation. Wales has openly stated in interviews that such a search engine would rival Google, but it would based on the Wikipedia principles of collective user collaboration and openness.
Mashable, also the world’s number one blog for social networking news, says it has doubts whether human-powered search could ever come close to touching Google’s market share: “Google is just too good at what it does, and is constantly improving.” Mashable’s Hopkins also wonders if Wales will produce something different to the recently launched Mahalo, which bills itself as the world’s first human-powered search engine.
But despite these doubts, Hopkins writes that “the social and search engine spaces could be in for a wild ride” if Wales could bring the same explosive growth of Wikipedia to a search project from Wikia. Competition is a wonderful thing, ain’t it?
