Interview with Dan Lewis from Local.Wikia

Last week, I wrote a post in which I discussed how hot "local" is right now. Jeff Jarvis at AlwaysOn said it's the perfect niche to get into because it is not overwhelmed currently. Shortly before my post, Wikia launched a Local.Wikia. Mashable has a good writeup about the launch. I still believe Local is hot and will be hot until it becomes overwhelmed (probably mid-2008). So to find out more about the new Local.Wikia product, I chatted with Dan Lewis, one of the founders of Local.Wikia. Even though he is a Mets fan, I still decided to post this interview. His answers to my general questions at the end of the interview are excellent.

Allen: Can you provide a brief background about yourself?

Dan Lewis: I and three others – Aaron Wright, David Pean, and Rob Lefkowitz – joined Wikia in December. Aaron, Rob, and I met in law school; Aaron and Dave are childhood friends. We started a sports wiki/blog hybrid – an "open-source sports magazine", if you will – in December of 2005. Wikia liked it and brought us on board a year later.

Allen: What is Wikia Local?

Dan: Local.Wikia is a network of open-source community newspapers and wiki-driven information banks. Each American town has its own section, where community members can add news, write local blogs or an occasional op-ed, ask questions of other area residents, create pages for local business, organizations, schools, etc. Ten years ago, a number of communities started websites about their town, but those sites fall into disrepair quickly, because the number of editors is limited and the readers cannot participate in the process. We fix that by opening up the site to everyone.

Allen: How does the service work? Is the content created by users or by your staff?

Dan: Everything is created by users. It really has to be, because only they know what is important.

Allen: Why did you decide to enter the local information market?

Dan: There's a need to open up the magazine/newspaper model; to give the readers control editorially. And there's a need for information banks of local information, written by local people for local people.

Allen: Is the local only local for the U.S. or for anywhere in the world?

Dan: It's world-wide. For the time being, we've set it up to be U.S.-centric, but because it's a wiki, creating sections for other localities is doable (and not difficult, either!). We're going to be setting up localities in other nations, but in the interim, others are invited to take the initiative.

Allen: What's the team like at Wikia Local?

Dan: We're four freakishly ambitious New Yorkers who want to make the world a better place by creating the world's largest databank of free information. And the scary thing is that we truly believe that.

Allen: Which cities are the most popular so far? Which have the best content?

Dan: The site is very new, but we're seeing early adopters from all corners – Lawton, Oklahoma; Dumas, Arkansas; Charlottesville, Virginia; and New Orleans, for example, all have content added already.

Allen: Who are your competitors?

Dan: We're not sure, but that's probably because our focus is on building the best product out there, and not on what others are doing.

Allen: How do you compare Wikia Local to Yelp or Judy's Book?

Dan: Local.Wikia gives users the ability to easily rate and review area business, just like the others, but it's aim is much broader. There's a long-defunct site called SpringfieldOnline.com – you can see it only via web caches and archives now – which aimed to be a one-stop local resource for Springfield, New Jersey. That is what we are doing, but instead of centering editorial control in the hands of a select few, we are giving everyone control. Create a page for your business; share a gripe about the school board; post a notice about a zoning waiver; build a database of important local government contact info; the possibilities are endless. Each town's section will be as good as the town's citizens wish it to be.

Allen: What's coming in the next 3-6 months for Wikia Local? Any juicy bits to share?

Dan: We're always cooking up lots of new features for all of our sites. While we have some ideas we are working on for Local.Wikia, users will also see features developed for other sites added to Local. For example, Local.Wikia has a rating box which was originally designed for Entertainment.Wikia, our celebrity gossip/TV/movie site. And the zip-code finder prominent on Local.Wikia was originally built for Politics.Wikia – our (local, state, and federal!) politics site.

Allen: Where do you see Local going this year?

Dan: Imagine this: A group of two or three people from the same town get together and decide to take the lead with their community's section. They start building a solid resource for their town, and others join in. Within a few months, a dozen others join in; a few months later, most of the town has used the site.

If that happens even once, we've succeeded. We've helped a community come together and build the most complete, most effective way to communicate online about their town – when it comes to both local news and more permanent local resources such as a section dedicated to area businesses.

We want to see that process begin for as many towns as possible this year, and hopefully crescendo for a few of them.

Allen: Do you see local and mobile playing nice together?

Dan: Absolutely – especially when it comes to Local.Wikia. When we say that we're dedicated to building the world's largest databank of free information, we mean it. All of our content is licensed for re-use under the GNU Free Documentation License. If someone comes along and builds a mobile application that spreads our content around, great.

Allen: What do you believe are the most important things that a startup must have to be successful?

Dan: Passion, teamwork, and a dedication to making life better for others. You can't do anything if you don't care. It's harder to do things alone. And blind self-interest will get you nowhere, fast.

Allen: What is the greatest business lesson you have learned in your career?

Dan: Don't be afraid to admit that you have no idea what you're doing.

Allen: What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a business?

Dan: Don't go it alone. I think that applies to any project, be it a business, hobby, or something in between.

Allen: Which new RSS feeds are you reading these days?

Dan: I read Wikia's four magazine sites religiously – Local, Politics, Entertainment, and Sports (a/k/a/ ArmchairGM) – and they're front and center of my RSS reader. I am constantly amazed by how truly fantastic so-called "user generated content" is. That turn of phrase will go down in history as a slur. The number of truly great ideas out there looking for some sunlight – that is, someone to listen – is enormous. Blogs were supposed to change that, but as I'm sure you're aware, a person can start up a blog easily, but getting others to read it is near impossible. The Wikia magazine model fixes that.

As for other RSS feeds, well, I'm a Web 2.0 anomaly in that I don't use it much. I'm a news junky but I'm not a passive reader – I go out and find things to read that deal with the hot topics of the day. I spend too much time on Google's Blog Search and Technorati. But I'm a big sports fan – so big that not even Sports.Wikia can give me my fix – so my RSS reader has literally four feeds in it: MetsBlog, Baseball Musings, Football Outsiders, and Deadspin.