Wikia was originally launched on October 18, 2004 with the name Wikicities.
Co-founded by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the name of the project was changed to Wikia on March 27, 2006. This followed a $4 million investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital. This was then followed by a $10 million investment from Amazon.
In only a few months, Wikia incorporated independent wikis, like the LyricWiki, Nukapedia, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki.
This quickly boosted the number of wikis it had to more than 1,500 spanning in 40 languages.
During this approach, Wikia started to become the more informal "Wikipedia".
This is because it often include articles about entertainment, maps, YouTube videos and other non-traditional wikis.
Four years later, in 2010, Wikia had 188 different languages, and by the end of 2012, Wikia had raised another $10.8 million in Series C funding from Institutional Venture Partners and previous investors Bessemer Ventures Partners and Amazon.
Later, another $15 million was raised in August 2014 for Series D funding, with investors that include Digital Garage, Amazon, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners.
The most notable moment in Wikia's life, was its rebranding.
On January 25, 2016, Wikia launched an entertainment news site it calls 'Fandom'.
At that time, Wikia was different from Fandom. But to better associate Fandom with Wikia, Fandom was named 'Fandom powered by Wikia', while Wikia remained under its Wikia name.
But it was on August 15, 2018, that Wikia announced that it would fully change its domain name into fandom.com in early 2019, officially changing its own name to Fandom.
Wikia is powered by the open-source wiki software, the same software used by Wikipedia. Its approach of creating content is also similar to Wikipedia, where it allows the communities to contribute to its ever-increasing contents.
Although Wikia allows almost anything to be its contents, the most common contents it has, includes those from popular fiction franchises of films, games, books, and other media.
And because it allows contributors to show their own subjective views about something, Wikia, then Fandom, quickly became a popular platform for fans.
Wikia approach utilizes Wikipedia's policies that limit how it shows detailed information. Wikipedia only allows neutral point-of-view about its topics, making it a more difficult platform for expression.
This is why in some particular topics, Wikia's contents are created with information that are in much greater details and more comprehensive than what can be found on Wikipedia.
As for the method of revenue, Wikia, and later Fandom, earned its income by showing ads.
Initially, the company used Google AdSense, but later added other third-party advertising services, before bringing its own ad management system.
Fandom also get its income from partnerships with various sponsors.