Crowd sourcing ups and downs

In the same week that Microsoft announces the closure of Encarta, Jimmy Wales announces that Wikia Search is closing the doors on 31 March.

Microsoft says that whilst “Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years,… the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”  And the biggest change to encyclopeidias in recent years is, of course, crowd sourced.

On the other hand, a later child of Jimmy Wales, Wiki Search, is closing. With low volumes and revenues it just hasn’t made the impact Wales was predicting. And, of course, Google now offers SearchWiki, that lets logged-in users prioritize, erase, supplement, and annotate search results.