Wiki Founder May Take on Facebook

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is apparently going after Facebook and Google in the social-networking arena, Wired reports. Wales showed slides of his upcoming project during a speech in South Africa, and a tech blogger on hand described it as a "search/social networking hybrid" that incorporates elements of both internet powerhouses.

"It's not a healthy thing that power is in the hands of a couple of companies," Wales said. "The information needs to be out there in the public," he added, a nod to the Wikipedia philosophy. A screen shot of Wales' new project showed that the pages look more like Facebook profiles than Google search pages. No word yet on when it rolls out. (More Wikipedia stories.)