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February 12, 2007, 03:33 PM ET
Wikipedia's Cloudy Financial Future
Is Wikipedia in financial trouble? It depends on whom you ask.
Florence Nibart-Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, set off a firestorm last week by painting what many bloggers considered to be a fairly dire portrait of the open-source encyclopedia's fiscal health. At a conference in Geneva, she said that Wikipedia -- a nonprofit organization that relies heavily on private donations -- only has enough cash on hand to keep its servers running for about three months. That comment frightened some online pundits, who imagined that the site might soon go corporate or disappear altogether.
In fact, it's awfully hard to imagine Wikipedia vanishing into thin air, as Ms. Devouard herself said. The encyclopedia's expenses now total about $5-million a year, a significant uptick since the fourth quarter of 2005, when its costs were just $321,000. But Wikipedia is such a valuable commodity that it should not have to disband for want of cash.
That said, the encyclopedia might struggle to meet its pledge to eschew advertisements and corporate sponsorship, according to Nicholas Carr of Rough Type. If the site wants to stay independent, it will have to redouble its fund-raising efforts, which have been only marginally successful. Wikipedia's most recent push has netted a bit over a million dollars.
Paul McNamara of Network World assesses the situation bluntly: "When you think about the impact that Wikipedia has had upon our society -- not all of it good, certainly -- it's astounding that the organization tasked with keeping it afloat has to resort to bake sales and begging." --Brock Read
Categories: Research, Company-Watch
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