Yep, you read that right. Wikipedia, the undisputed king of free information was funded by a porn site called Bomis. The link between Wikipedia and Bomis started in At that time you may recall that there was no Wikipedia at all. Sure, a few did exist, but the internet was not the jungle that it is today. There were a multitude of websites, and plenty of people wanting to capitalize on the next big thing. Jimmy Wales is of course the co-founder of Wikipedia. Back in , these three men were looking at creating a new profitable website.

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The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. Bomis created Nupedia as a free online encyclopedia with content submitted by experts but it had a tedious, slow review process. The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation began in with a Board of Trustees composed of Bomis' three founders Wales, Davis and Shell [17] and was first headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida , [18] Bomis' location. Jimmy Wales left a study track at Indiana University as a PhD candidate to work in finance before completing his doctoral dissertation. Wales wanted to participate in the online-based entrepreneurial ventures which were increasingly popular and successful during the mids. Wales co-founded Bomis in , with business associates Tim Shell, [4] [23] [31] and his then-manager Michael Davis, [15] [16] [17] as a for-profit corporation with joint ownership. Petersburg, Florida where the company subsequently relocated.
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Wikimedia Commons. Here's something few people probably know about Wikipedia: It was started with money from Jimmy Wales' previous site which relied in part on soft corn porn to generate revenue. A big part of the site was the "Bomis Babe Report," which was a blog dedicated to half naked celebrities and women. While Wales claims that the "mature audience" section of the site provided a mere ten percent of revenues for the site, the Wikipedia entry on Bomis suggests that quite a bit of effort was put into providing such content. Along with the previously mentioned blog, Bomis Premium was a section of the site that let users pay for exclusive X-rated content. The site also hosted nekkid. While Wales would clearly like to downplay this aspect of his early work, it turns out that Bomis was pivotal to the early years of Wikipedia. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Login Join.
In other words, no, it was not. That description is inaccurate. If you're not exceptionally proud of the erotic web site you ran before the dot-com bust, a defense that hinges on the definition of soft pornography probably won't help matters. As someone who grew up after cable television and before the web, I thought "soft porn" described the late-night movies on pay cable that stop your channel surfing dead in its tracks. I know this because I did a comprehensive Google image search last night on the term Bomis looking for porn, clicking through page after page of results. And people say bloggers don't do any original reporting.