On the heels of me saying yesterday how I hate how the media treats Facebook, it happens again today.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of the ultra-popular Wikipedia, was at a conference in South Africa, and talking about his new company, Wikia, something got revealed. They are working on some sort of search engine, but buried in his slides was what appeared to be a Facebook profile at fist blush. Mr. Wales is now being cagey about what that was, but the rumor is that Wikipedia may turn in to some sort of social network. Course every one is calling this a “Facebook killer”, but what can you do?
The reason this is big news is the tens of millions of people who already use Wikipedia, and like it’s style. If this turns out to be true, and they auto-convert their users… that would make for one heck of a social network launch on the first day. I am sure there will be more news on this in the coming weeks and months.
There will probably be many more to come out and compete with the likes of Facebook. I don’t think facebook will go anywhere. Networks such as MySpace and Facebook will remain strong.