Reuters: Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia, which is run as a not-for-profit service organization. Wikipedia claims 410 million unique visitors a month — fifth most in the world — making it the envy of many for-profit rivals in the Silicon Valley who aspire to generate such numbers. The San Francisco-based operation, which turns 10 years old on Saturday, has an objective of reaching 1 billion unique visitors a month in the next five years while maintaining its non-profit status. The reach this objective, Wikipedia is targeting adding users in India and Brazil, and other developing countries. China is virtually cut off from Wikipedia access and western markets are maturing, so Wikipedia is looking elsewhere for expansion.
“We’re a little bit confounding to folks in Silicon Valley because they look at us and see the potential for monetization, just because their entire world is geared toward monetization,” Gardner told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. She spoke on Tuesday but her remarks were embargoed until Wednesday.
“We don’t move in the world of IPOs and valuation and investment,” said Gardner, who runs the non-profit foundation behind Wikipedia. “We never talk about it, we never think about it.” For now Wikipedia is content to function on its operating budget of about $20 million a year, raised mostly through donations, with the primary goal of adding more readers. Read more at Reuters.….
From Sanjeev Kulkarni
