QUOTE(One @ Fri 17th April 2009, 2:49pm)
QUOTE
There are other answer enterprises out there. Some borrow from the popular success of Wikipedia and try the wiki approach: WikiAnswers and the Jimmy Wales-led copycat site, Wikianswers. Amazing how a lower-case letter can keep you from getting sued. Maybe I ought to open a fast food chicken joint and call it KfC?
Kohs, you need to fix this section.
Wikianswers was indeed first in time. See
my post on it. What happened is less absurd sounding than your analogy. At minimum, you would need to change your analogy to opening KfC in 1951, then refusing to budge from it.
Anyhow, Answer Corp. WikiAnswers just got a notice of publication for the Federal mark WIKIANSWERS. The form suggests that parties who believe they will be damaged by the mark have 30 days from April 28 to file an opposition to it. But of course, I don't really understand this process, and I dislike trademark law.
Their application does say, however, that the putative mark was first used in commerce 02/01/2007; I imagine they would have to admit that
Wikianswers was first.
To really fit the analogy, wouldn't my KfC have to have been open for business two days a week, serving lunch between 1:45 and 2:15 PM?
FAQ Farm was Chris Whitten's project, launched 2002.
Answers.Wikia.com was launched November 2004 by someone named "
Hemanshu". It was mostly unused until January 2009 (well under 2,000 unique visitors per month, according to Compete.com -- by comparison, Wikipedia Review has gotten over 2,000 visitors since the month we re-opened it as a wiki directory, with and average of 13,000 a month for the past three months.)
Angela Beesley made edits to the Wikia site in the following proportion:
2004 - 14 edits
2005 - 11 edits
2006 - 31 edits
2007 - 1 edit
2008 - 1 edit
2009 - 500+ edits
In November 2006, Answers.com purchased Whitten's FAQ Farm. They re-named it to better fit the Answers.com brand line. As far back as March 2008, Wiki.Answers.com was getting 7,500,000+ unique visitors per month, while Answers.Wikia.com was getting about 1,200.
If I elect to change the blog post, it's only going to reflect more on the fact that some dormant website name (how DO you get "Wikianswers" from "Answers.Wikia.com"?) was sitting on the bottom of Jimbo's trash can collecting dust, while another more enterprising operation used the most appropriate name for itself (Answers.com, with sub-domain Wiki.Answers.com) to actually build a popular and better-organized web destination.
Greg