Mr. Wales announced the decision via blog post. He said the Wikia Search has not been enjoying the success they hoped it will when launching it. Unlike Google, which bases its search results on algorithms, Wikia Search results are determined by user ratings and input. Obviously, it wasn’t a winning formula. 

 

"While I personally believe in the opportunity for free software to make serious inroads into the search space, our project, Wikia Search, has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped," Wales wrote on his personal blog. 

 

"In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It’s something I care about deeply."

 

Wikia has been the fifth-fastest-growing member community destination last month with 3.75 million users, 172% more than a year ago. The top four spots were occupied by Twitter, Zimbio, Facebook and Multiply. 

 

Wales said it will focus on social network Wikia instead. Following the recipe that brought Wikipedia encyclopedia where it is now, Wales developed the Wikia Search basing it on user-contributed content allowing anyone to rate and filter the search results. 

 

However, unlike Wikipedia, Wikia Search was meant to be a profit-generating project from the beginning. Although users would have done a lot of work editing the results, there were no plans on cutting them in on the profits, said Wales in an interview with BBC.