Wikia Search Launches Private Beta; Public Launch On January 7 from TechCrunch has an email sent to a limited number of beta testers, announcing that Search Wikia has launched.

Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia and driving force behind Search Wikia, said in the email that Search Wikia is “going to be letting people in slowly over the next few days and we are aiming for a January 7th public launch.” Technically, they launched just before 2008, which makes for a 2007 launch. The public launch is expected January 7th.

For more coverage on the Search Wikia launch, see Techmeme. For our past coverage on Wikia Search, see our Search Wikia section and Q&A With Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia, from when the service was announced a year ago.

Postscript From Danny: Interestingly, Search Wikia’s home page has no mention of the beta happening, which is odd for a service that lists “transparency” as its first of four organizing principles. However, it is mentioned in the public mailing list for the service here.

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Search Wikia

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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