Wikia Search launched live Monday in its first publicly accessible form.

The search engine, backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is an open source search tool that allows collaboration.

Wikipedia and Wikia operate independently and are unrelated except for Wales' involvement in each.

Wales announced plans for the project last year and said he wanted to provide an open alternative to Google (NSDQ: GOOG).

Wikia Search uses a social networking model, allowing users to create profiles, select friends, share photos, and manage privacy preferences in addition to providing traditional search capabilities. Users can click on an option to start or participate in discussions about search rankings and write mini-articles about search terms.

"Today at Wikia we have released our social networking features for MediaWiki under the GNU GPL 2.0. [...] I think the whole wiki/free culture space is about to get a whole lot more interesting."

Portland, Oregon, July 27, 2007 - Wikia, Inc. (www.wikia.com) the leading provider of community resources for building and organizing free content on every topic, today unveiled major next steps in its work to build a new search platform founded on open-source search protocols and human collaboration at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON).

This is the Community Portal of Search Wikia, which is the wiki to implement an editable open content free search engine.

Yes, you can help. Either as a developer or a wiki editor. Please see below.

You can ask questions at the forum or talk to one of the site admins if you need specific help.

The popular social networking site Facebook just announced a Chinese version, but similar Chinese-based Web sites such as Xiaonei and Hainei have been struggling there. However, since April, UCenter Home, an open source social network service based on PHP and MySQL, is pushing open social networking in China.

"Wikia, Inc.

Elgg is an open source application for rolling out a social network. It installs like any Web-based software, but instead of a blog or a wiki, it gives you all the components of a social networking site -- your own MySpace!

Look out, Google! Jimmy Wales is coming for you. The founder of Wikipedia is aggressively building out his Wikia effort, a commercial collection of Web sites anyone can edit. One of its key parts? Search.

"Yesterday brought the alpha release of Wikia Search, a new engine built on free software and free culture values. For Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the release is a milestone in the realization of a long-held dream. However, as he tells Linux.com, Wikia Search is still a couple of years from maturity, with many of the details still to work out. «Philosophically, I'm a big supporter of free software,» says Wales..."