A little over two years ago I wrote about copying content between Wikitravel and World66 (they’re both using the same Creative Commons license that allows this). Wikitravel “won more” from the operation due to permitting more flexible editing.
Now they’ve both won through simultaneously announced acquisition by Internet Brands.
An Alexa traffic rank graph of Wikitravel, World66, and carsdirect.com, I believe the most popular Internet Brands site:
Congratulations again to Wikitravel cofounder Evan Prodromou. It’s fantastic to see projects and people like this get some commercial recognition after years of dedication to the “commons” (very broadly speaking) — see also Webjay and MusicBrainz.
Ross Mayfield has a short post on the acquisitions the best part of which is this:
Terms of the deal are not disclosed, but if you find them you could add them to this wiki page.
[…] On a much smaller scale the acquisition of Wikitravel and World66 earlier this year is an example of the value of hard to duplicate communities. The entire contents of these sites could be legally duplicated for commercial use, yet Internet Brands paid (unfortunately an undisclosed amount) to acquire them, presumably because copies on new sites with zero community would be worthless. […]
[…] It appears that Prodromou’s Wikitravel lives by these rules and has succeeded. […]
[…] more on commercial wikis, see Mike Linksvayer’s previous blog post: Wikitravel and World66 both win. Read the last blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:A new global responsible gambling code of conduct to […]
[…] and Wikitravel were both announced to have been acquired by IB in 2006 (document below says the acquisition happened in 2005). I don’t know that the terms for […]