Layoffs at Jimmy Wales' Wikia?
It's not surprising, considering that everybody else is doing it.
Valleywag reports that Wikia, the for-profit wiki software and search start-up created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, has laid off about a third of its 43-person workforce--or 12 to 13 employees.
A Wikia representative was not immediately available to confirm.
The company, formerly known as Wikicities, has big-name investor backing, but it doesn't appear to have pulled in any funding for nearly two years. It raised a Series B round of an undisclosed size from Amazon.com in December 2006; previously, the company had taken a $4 million Series A round and angel funding from Valley luminaries such as Marc Andreessen, Joi Ito, and Ron Conway, as well as venture firms Bessemer Venture Partners and the Omidyar Network.
Since then, Wikia has been working on an ambitious search project and has made acquisitions such as that of search tool Grub.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.
