INNOBLOG

Wikia, a for-profit company started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, made news yesterday when it took the cover off Wikia Search, ending months of speculation about what shape the high-profile startups open source search engine would take. Currently online in its alpha stage, Wikia Search promises that its open architecture will strip away the black box that surrounds search as run by the Googles of the world and ultimately leverage the collective wisdom of the internet to provide better search results.

Reviews thus far, however, havent been very positive. The blogosphere has not been too high on Wikias capacity to return even mediocre search results.

The reviews dont seem to faze Mr. Wales or the folks at Wikia too much, however. One need only click on the "about us button on the Wikia Search home page to find that even its creators dont have any illusions about where their product stands now: We are aware that the quality of the search results is low; Mr. Wales put it even more bluntly in a response to Michael Arringtons review over at Tech Crunch, writing "Yeah, the search sucks today.

This all begs the question: why would they take the cover off of Wikia Search if they absolutely knew it was terrible?

One might think that the answer, as it often does here on the Innoblog, lies in the patterns of disruption. Perhaps Wikia, the story goes, understands that to displace an incumbent the entrant needs to make trade-offs, developing a product that is worse than the incumbent along some dimensions while improving along other dimensions, particularly those that consumers really value. So it has pushed out a search engine that is worse along traditional metrics that define quality in search (like relevancy of results), but better along other dimensions (it provides a sense of community and channels human involvement). With time, Wikia doubtlessly hopes, its community will rapidly improve the quality of its search, elevating it to a level where it matches or overtakes the leading incumbents like Google or Yahoo.

It sounds like a decent story. And it might be. But just as I thought back in August when I wrote about Wikias acquisition of Grub, I dont think it will work. I have two reasons.

First, while many disruptions start out inferior to incumbents, they are at least good enough to attract a core group of consumers. Wikia is so disappointing that it might even fail to meet the good enough standard for even the tech-oriented, open source banner-waving, down-with-the-corporate-stranglehold-on-the-internet set to commit to it. Its index is so small right now that the search can, in many instances, barely be said to work. And its community-oriented features are limited, allowing account-creating users to do little more than post pictures, evaluate search results and write mini-articles describing search terms.

My second problem with Wikia is that it seems to be trying to be a low-end disruptor in a market that isnt yet overserved by leading incumbents. Low-end disruption, the type of innovation that starts off poorly but improves, eventually disrupting incumbents by being "good enough along traditional dimensions and better along new, customer-valued dimensions, typically works only when consumers are overserved by incumbent solutions. But with web search, people arent overserved by the Googles of the world. Instead, people are underserved, they consistently want more out of search engines than even the leading incumbents can provide today. In underserved markets, entrants only succeed by besting incumbents at the things that incumbents do best. Does Wikia really hope to produce more relevant search results than two-hundred billion dollar market cap search companies?

Bottomline: Wikia needs a game-changing feature in a market where a game changing feature might not even exist. The best search engines arent yet serving consumers at the level that they want. Wikia is going to have a difficult time doing any better. I predict a tough road for Jimmy Wales & company ahead.