Wikiwand, formerly stylized as WikiWand, is a commercial proprietary interface developed for viewing

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

articles. Its interface includes a sidebar menu displaying the table of contents, a navigation bar, personalized links to other languages, new typography, access to previews of linked articles, display advertisements, and sponsored articles. The interface is available on Chrome,

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

, and

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

as well as via Wikiwand's website.

History

Wikiwand was founded in 2013 by Lior Grossman and Ilan Lewin. It officially launched in August 2014. In 2014, Wikiwand was able to raise $600,000 to support the development of the interface. According to Grossman, "It didn't make sense to us that the fifth most popular website in the world, used by half a billion people, has an interface that hasn't been updated in over a decade. We found the Wikipedia interface cluttered, hard to read, hard to navigate, and lacking in terms of usability." In March 2015, Wikiwand released an iOS app for iPhone and iPad. In February 2020, an Android app was under development. In 2021, it was noted that visiting a Wikiwand page made the visitor's device exchange hundreds of requests and several megabytes of data with advertisers. On January 12, 2023, Wikiwand 2.0 was officially launched with an overhauled interface and new features like text-to-speech and AI-generated summaries collaborated with Wordtune Read. On March 1, a Q&A feature powered by GPT-3 was added to the top of all articles.

Business model

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikiwand is ad-supported. It employs a freemium model that charges for a premium, ad-free plan. A large number of tracking cookies are set. When it started, Wikiwand announced that it would donate 30 percent of its profits to the Wikimedia Foundation. As of 2024, this applies only for user donations, not to subscription or advertising revenue. Per the site's Donation page, donations to Wikiwand are made to the

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i company Wikipele Ltd.

References

External links

* {{Wikipedia 2014 software Internet properties established in 2014 Interfaces Websites which mirror Wikipedia