Via one of my new favorite blogs, SeoBlackHat.com, Wikipedia is seriously hurting for funds. Apparently Wiki only has enough to cash to fund their servers for the next 3-4 months. If they don’t raise enough money, “it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”, says Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation.

One solution would be to add a Google sponsored-search-box to Wiki. That kind of revenue should easily cover their server costs. It’s definitely less intrusive than adding traditional blocks of ads, which some have suggested. The darling of the SEO community, Jason Calicanis, reports that Mozilla earned $72 million through the embedded Firefox sponsored Google search box. Sponsored search is unobtrusive, and could even be considered beneficial to users.

I realize Wiki holds its values dearly. I’m not even sure if commercial options like sponsored search would be allowed under Wikipedia’s charter. But if it comes down to either shutting down Wiki or adding a sponsored search box, the choice seems clear.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, Financial/Stock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.