Fandom (website) legal form corporation
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.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.
type of business organization corporate structure incorporation legal entity type business registration