The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary and is now the fifth most used website in the world, with over 250 million people logging on every month. Although its value as a business entity doesn’t come close to the recent $50 billion valuation of Facebook, this is because Wikipedia continues to abstain from ‘monetising’ the site and allowing advertised links, which would bring in substantial revenues. The source of funding continues to come from the users themselves; Jimmy Wales — one of the co-founders of the site — regularly appeals for donations from the Wikipedia community of users to help further fund and develop the product.
The fact that the business is run as a notfor-profit organisation and has charitable status might be seen as a weakness by some, but Jimmy Wales considers it a strength, as the business model has stayed close to its original plan and it is not pressured to meet quarterly targets that other sites financed by venture capitalists have to face.
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