Jimmy Wales: The New Wikia Search API “Is Like Facebook Apps For Search Results.”
Jimmy Wales is opening up the Wikia Search engine to anyone who wants their own data or application to show up in results. Called Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions (WISE), it lets developers create search results based on certain keywords or rules.
Context & Ripple Effects
Wales has been chasing a community-built alternative to Google since announcing plans for an open-source search engine to rival Google in late 2006, followed by an editable, wiki-style search project in early 2007 and a private beta ahead of the January 2008 public launch. The reception was rough — TechCrunch called the launch a complete letdown — so WISE is Wales' attempt to give the struggling engine a reason to exist by turning search results into a platform developers can build on.
First-order effects
- Developers can now inject their own data and applications directly into Wikia Search results through the WISE API, triggered by specific keywords or rules — effectively making third parties co-authors of the results page.
- Wikia Search shifts from a purely algorithmic/community-ranked engine to a platform play, betting that app-style extensibility will differentiate it where its core index and ranking have underwhelmed.
Second-order effects
- Opening results to keyword-triggered third-party content creates an obvious spam and quality-control surface: whoever can define rules can game visibility, forcing Wikia to build curation and abuse controls it hasn't yet demonstrated.
- If the model gains any traction, it pressures incumbent engines to expose more structured, developer-extensible result surfaces — though Google and Yahoo face no immediate competitive threat given Wikia Search's weak launch reception.
Third-order effects
- WISE is an early instance of the tension that now defines search: whether results are a neutral ranked list or an extensible surface where publishers and apps negotiate placement — a question that resurfaces in today's AI-answer era around publisher controls and answer-engine economics.
- For Wales personally, the pattern points toward a recurring arc: ambitious open, community-driven challengers to closed platforms (search here, later WikiTribune) that struggle against network effects regardless of ideological appeal.
The trend: This is one data point in the long-running effort to crack open search from a black-box monopoly into a participatory, developer-extensible layer — an idea that keeps failing on distribution but keeps returning in new forms.