Understanding the World: “What Makes Wikipedia So Valuable For Users Is What Gets In Its Way Of Becoming A Valuable”
From Afflictor.com:
“Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire” is the title of Amy Chozick’s short, sharp New York Times Magazine
portrait of the Wikipedia founder, a singular figure in the Information
Age, who was right about crowdsourcing knowledge when almost everyone
else thought he was wrong, when he was treated like a punchline. The
collective nature of the virtual encyclopedia made it impossible for
Wales to cash in, but somehow I think he’ll slide by. Let’s weep for
others. An excerpt:
“Wikipedia,
which is now available in 285 languages, gets more than 20 billion page
views and roughly 516 million unique visitors a month. It is the
fifth-most-visited Web site in the world behind Google, Yahoo, Microsoft
and Facebook; and ahead of Amazon, Apple and eBay. Were Wikipedia to
accept banner and video ads, it could, by most estimates, be worth as
much as $5 billion. But that kind of commercial sellout would probably
cause the members of the community, who are not paid for their
contributions, to revolt. ‘The paradox,’ says Michael J. Wolf, managing
director at Activate, a technology-consulting firm in New York and a
member of the Yahoo! board, ‘is that what makes Wikipedia so valuable
for users is what gets in its way of becoming a valuable, for-profit
enterprise.’
Wales suffers
from the same paradox. Being the most famous traveling spokesman for
Internet freedom brings in a decent living, but it’s not Silicon Valley
money. It’s barely London money. Wales’s total net worth, by most
estimates, is just above $1 million, including stock from his for-profit
company Wikia, a wiki-hosting service. His income is a topic of
constant fascination. Type ‘Jimmy Wales‘
into
Google and ‘net worth’ is the first pre-emptive search to pop up.
‘Everyone makes fun of Jimmy for leaving the money on the table,’ says
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the
nonprofit that runs Wikipedia.
Wales is well rehearsed in brushing off questions about his income. In 2005, Florida Trend
magazine reported that he made enough money in his brief stint as an
options-and-futures trader in Chicago, before starting Wikipedia, that
he would never have to work again....MORE
