
Finally we have the word directly from Jimmy Wales via the Wikia Search mailing list I am on. This comes after the IRC comment from yesterday. Looks like the alpha is live now and the public launch in approximately two weeks.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Re: [Search-l] private pre-alpha invites available
Ping me if you want one.... we're launched.
I'm going to be letting people in slowly over the next few days and we are aiming for a January 7th public launch. We want to run over the system with help from people to complain about what is...
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The front page of Wiki.com has been redirecting to Wikia for a few weeks, right now Wikia has a wiki page up saying that MindTouch is shutting down by January 25, 2007 (see Message from Mindtouch). Wikia's page currently reads:
"Wiki.com is not affiliated in any way with Wikia.com. Wikia has no control or ownership of the domain wiki.com. This rescued wiki was created following rumors that wiki.com was closing down. At the time, there was no indication whether wiki.com wikis would disappear or not, so Wikia made plans to migrate these sites...
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"Amazon has nothing to do with this project. They are a valued investor in Wikia, but people are really speculating beyond the facts. This has nothing to do with A9, Amazon, etc."