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Wikipeda could shut within 3-4 months

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By Mike (Contact - View My Woyano)
Published Sun 11 Feb 2007, 2552 Views, 9 Comments

In a rather extraordinary example of begging for money, Florence Devouard, Chairwoman of the Wikimedia foundation has told an audience at the Lift07 conference that Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for another 3-4 months, and that without further funding Wikipedia “might disappear”.

Could Wikipedia shut it’s doors? Tthe site alone would be worth at least $xxx million, if not a billion, after all, there’s literally no better property out there when it comes to traffic and authority than Wikipedia. And whoever bought it would not only have an amazing marketing tool, they could even control the truth, at least as most of us know it. Indeed, the likes of Microsoft wouldn’t need to hire people to edit entries, they could simply pay the new owner. Text Link sales alone across the site would more than pay for the servers the site uses, tens of thousands of times over. I smell a begging bluff on this one, but Devouard did make the claim.



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Category: News, Technology
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    9 Comments

  1.  
    JV ~ 38 months ago
    0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
    This is interesting, but from what I hear the commercial branch of Wikipedia has just got a 22m investement...? Surely they would keep it afloat no..?
    [ reply ]
    1.  
      Mike ~ 38 months ago
      0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
      It should... and at least for a lot longer than 3-4 months (i should hope). Otherwise, Google should get in there and put that under its belt!
      [ reply ]
      1.  
        Mike ~ 38 months ago
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        [ reply ]
        1.  
          JV ~ 38 months ago
          0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
          Yes, if you look at the financials, it seems unlikely that they will run out of money if they just raised a million.

          http://sethf.com/infothou...blog/archives/001144.html
          http://upload.wikimedia.o.../28/Wikimedia_2006_fs.pdf
          [ reply ]
          1.  
            Michael ~ 38 months ago
            0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
            They could easily make gobs of money without showing any ads on their own site, thus not compromising their vaunted sense of integrity, by creating an Adsense ID and making it available to people like us who could send some of our ad revenue their way. To spread the love around, they could put together an easy to use Wordpress plugin which allows one to specify how often to show Wiki's Adsense code, and I'll bet thousands of blogs around the world would be willing to run it. Even if you have people showing Wiki's Adsense just a small fraction of the time, with wide adoption it would add up and become a fairly substantial source of income.

            I love the Wikipedia project, but I have little sympathy for people who are manipulative and unwilling to consider intelligent means to solve their problems.
            [ reply ]
            1.  
              angus101 ~ 37 months ago
              0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
              Jimmy Wales knows exactly what he's doing with this stuff. he makes plenty of money from the frugal money rounds and plenty from contributions. He's also got enough pay-for stuff in his portfolio that the worry about the core Wikipedia site becomes less and less.

              But the one thing that's going to rock on this is his next major project which is a user generated content driven search engine ... watch out Google!
              [ reply ]
              1.  
                cdin ~ 36 months ago
                0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
                No wiki, no savvy!
                :o/
                [ reply ]
                1.  
                  ragados ~ 35 months ago
                  0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
                  How much do you wanna bet, if they are forced to sell... Google buys 'em?
                  [ reply ]
                  1.  
                    danielle ~ 34 months ago
                    0 votes thumbs up thumbs down
                    its still there :) must of been the tenner i donated thats keeping them going ;)
                    [ reply ]
                    1.  
                      AdGuy
                      22 votes thumbs up thumbs down
                      This is my two cents...

                         
                      Hey you know AdGuy always gets the last word! ;)

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