Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Jimmy Wales is a well-known Internet entrepreneur from America. Founder of Wikipedia. Director of Wikia, Inc. Since March 2012, he has been the Public Openness and Policy Adviser to the UK Government. From 2003 to 2006 he was the chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation. In this article, we will describe a brief biography of a businessman.

Family & School

Jimmy Wales was born in Huntsville (USA) in 1966. The boy's father worked as a manager in a grocery store. And the grandmother and mother of the future entrepreneur owned a private school, where training was practiced based on the methodology of Maria Montessori. It consisted in the fact that the children determined the content, time and form of the lessons on their own. Jimmy loved to read encyclopedias the most.

After studying at a private institution of relatives, Wales entered the Randolph School. There, the young man was prepared for the exams at Auburn University. Then Jimmy moved to Alabama. After finishing studiesWales had a desire to write a doctoral dissertation in philosophy. To achieve this goal, he began teaching at the universities of Indiana and Alabama. But the future entrepreneur never wrote his dissertation.

First business

From 1994 to 2000, Jimmy Wales worked for Chicago Opshins Associates. There, a young man traded securities and received a fairly high salary.

In 1996, in partnership with Tim Schell, he founded the Bomis internet company. In fact, it was a search engine designed exclusively for men. Later, a very significant profit Jimmy brought a paid resource with pornographic content "premium.bomis.com". In 2012, the entrepreneur stated in an interview that the site bomis.com no longer exists. And earlier it was the same search engine as Yahoo. Users could create communities on Bomis and share links. Jimmy dubbed bomis.com the "grandfather of Wikipedia."

In 2011, the hero of this article came to Russia. On June 15, he gave an open lecture at the Pushkinsky cinema. After the end, the audience asked him questions for an hour. The next day, the entrepreneur spoke at MIREA in front of teachers and students.

The same year, Wales sat on the jury of the German Quadriga Prize, awarded to politicians. Most of the judges decided to give the award to Vladimir Putin. But Jimmy was categorically against it and even left the jury. As a result, the Russian prime minister was never awardedreward. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev considered this story a manifestation of "inconsistency and cowardice" of the members of the organizing committee. He also stated that “for the international community, the award is definitely over.”

In 2012, Wales became the UK Government's Public Openness and Policy Adviser. This position is unpaid. Jimmy works to increase public participation in government policymaking.

Wikimedia Foundation

In 2000, there was one very popular project on the Internet. And it was called Nupedia. The site was free to access articles written by experts. The volume of content grew very slowly. So Wikipedia was created in January 2001 by website founder Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Initially, it was supposed to develop materials for the main project on it. But Nupedia soon faded into the background. Thanks to rapid growth, the secondary site has become the main one. In the early stages, the development of "Wikipedia" was exclusively engaged in Larry. And the hero of this article solved only financial issues.

Jimmy Wales, who is now close to $25 million, considers himself the founder of Wikipedia. After all, Sanger was formally hired. Although Larry still continues to call himself a co-founder. He soon left the project and began to criticize Jimmy. Sanger portrayed Wales as someone who hates the elite.

In 2003Jimmy founded the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The company's headquarters was in Tampa, Florida. The main responsibility of the Foundation was to maintain Wikipedia and its sister projects. Wales is still on the board of directors and promotes them.

From the beginning of 2005 to the present, the Wikimedia Foundation has existed solely on donations and grants. There are no other sources of funding.

Other projects

In 2004, Jimmy Wales founded Wikia with Angela Beasley. The service provided hosting services for sites using wiki technology.

Private life

Jimmy Wales, whose biography is presented above, met his first wife at a student party. In 1994, he moved to Chicago with Pam. But the marriage did not last long.

In March 1997, Jimmy married Christina Roan, who worked as a Mitsubishi trader. Soon the couple had a daughter. However, a divorce followed.

Since 2011, Wales has been dating Kate Garvey. At one time, she worked as an assistant secretary for Tony Blair himself (the former English Prime Minister). At the end of 2012, the lovers got married. They later had a daughter.