Fandom (website) owned by Fandom, Inc.
Fandom (formerly known as Wikicities and later Wikia) is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics (i.e. video games, TV series, movies, entertainers, etc.). The privately held, for-profit Delaware company was founded in October 2004 by Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia) and Angela Beesley. Fandom was acquired in 2018 by TPG Inc. and Jon Miller through Integrated Media Co.Fandom uses MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software used by Wikipedia. Fandom, Inc. derives its income from advertising and sold content, publishing most user-provided text under copyleft licenses. The company also runs the associated Fandom editorial project, offering pop-culture and gaming news. Fandom wikis are hosted under the domain fandom.com, but some, especially those that focus on subjects other than media franchises, were hosted under wikia.org until November 2021. In recent years Fandom.com has become one of the top 50 most visited websites in the world, ranking the 47th most visited website in the world as of April 2023, according to Similarweb.2018–present: Further acquisitions and inclusivity
In February 2018, former AOL CEO Jon Miller, backed by private equity firm TPG Capital, acquired Fandom. Miller was named co-chairman of Wikia, Inc., alongside Jimmy Wales, and TPG Capital director Andrew Doyle assumed the role of interim CEO.In July 2018, Fandom purchased Screen Junkies from Defy Media, and in December of that year, they had acquired Curse LLC for Curse Media assets such as wiki services Gamepedia and websites part of the Curse Network such as D&D Beyond, Futhead, Muthead, and StrawPoll.me.In February 2019, former StubHub CEO Perkins Miller took over as CEO, and Wikia fully changed its domain name to fandom.com. Various wikis had been tested with the new domain during 2018, with some wikis that focused on "more serious topics" having their domains changed to wikia.org instead.In June 2019, Fandom began an effort to rewrite its core platform, which was written based on MediaWiki version 1.19, to base it on a newer version of the software. On March 11, 2020, Fandom released the Unified Community Platform (UCP), based on MediaWiki 1.33, for newly created wikis.In 2020, Fandom sold Curse Network properties to Magic Find which includes communities and news websites.In November 2020, Fandom began to migrate Gamepedia wikis to a fandom.com domain as part of their search engine optimization strategy, with migrations continuing into 2021.In February 2021, Fandom acquired Focus Multimedia, the retailer behind Fanatical, an e-commerce platform that sells digital games, ebooks and other products related to gaming.In late March 2021, Fandom updated its terms of use policy to prohibit deadnaming transgender individuals across their websites. This policy was in response to a referendum on the Star Wars wiki Wookieepedia to ban deadnaming, which triggered a debate around an article about the non-binary artist Robin Pronovost. In response to the deadnaming controversy, Fandom also introduced new LGBT guidelines across its websites in late June 2021 which include links to queer-inclusive and trans support resources.In June 2021, Fandom began to roll out FandomDesktop, a redesigned theme for desktop devices, with plans to retire its legacy Oasis and Hydra skins once the rollout was complete. Two months later on August 3, Fandom rolled out a new look, new colors, new logo, and introduced a new tagline, "For the love of fans."In late November/early December 2021, all remaining wikis under the wikia.org domain migrated to the fandom.com domain.On April 13, 2022, Hasbro announced that it would acquire D&D Beyond from Fandom.Fandom shut down StrawPoll.me in August 2022.On October 3, 2022, Fandom acquired GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News, and Comic Vine from Red Ventures.Fandom, Inc.
The overall parent company, Fandom, Inc., is headquartered at the Hallidie Building on 130 Sutter Street in San Francisco, California. The company was incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.Fandom has technical staff in the US, but also has an office in Poznań, Poland, where the primary engineering functions are performed.Fandom derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house. Alongside Fandom's in-house advertising, they continue to use AdSense as well as Amazon Ads and several other third-party advertising services. Fandom also gains income from various partnerships oriented around various sweepstake sponsorships on related wikis.
Fandom has several other offices. International operations are based in Germany, and Asian operations and sales are conducted in Tokyo. Other sales offices are located in Chicago, Latin America, Los Angeles (marketing programming and content), New York City, and London.
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