Wikipedia is the largest Internet Encyclopedia with over 350 Million articles. It is multi-lingual and add-free since it launched in 2001. Since long time, It's business model has been hovering around Community contribution on articles and Donations for revenue to keep their servers and offices up and running.
Recently, when co-founder Jimmy Wales was asked about any plan to pivot its business model, he expressed his satisfaction over the current model and mentioned Wikipedia is doing financially well. He said, the organization is spending less than it earns. Thus it is in good shape to survive.
The Encyclopedia being add-free, currently survives through Donations which never picked up well on attracting major donors and survives on donations worth 15 euros each.
Wales expressed is concerns over the increasing use of Mobile Personal Assistants like Apple Siri on his business model. With increasing usage of personal assistants, users are getting information from Wikipedia indirectly without even visiting the website. Though it is good for user experience since they are able to get what they want, but users do not get to see the "Donation" button on Wikipedia website which might potentially impact their donation revenue in future.
Though, Wikipedia hasn't observed any impact because of this yet, but it might create problems for them later. Hence they have started working on fixing this issue. Wikipedia has already started with its donation drive to fuel up its reserves before it is empty.
In his words,
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| Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Co-founder |
Recently, when co-founder Jimmy Wales was asked about any plan to pivot its business model, he expressed his satisfaction over the current model and mentioned Wikipedia is doing financially well. He said, the organization is spending less than it earns. Thus it is in good shape to survive.
The Encyclopedia being add-free, currently survives through Donations which never picked up well on attracting major donors and survives on donations worth 15 euros each.
Wales expressed is concerns over the increasing use of Mobile Personal Assistants like Apple Siri on his business model. With increasing usage of personal assistants, users are getting information from Wikipedia indirectly without even visiting the website. Though it is good for user experience since they are able to get what they want, but users do not get to see the "Donation" button on Wikipedia website which might potentially impact their donation revenue in future.
Though, Wikipedia hasn't observed any impact because of this yet, but it might create problems for them later. Hence they have started working on fixing this issue. Wikipedia has already started with its donation drive to fuel up its reserves before it is empty.
In his words,
"Fix the roof when there's sunshine, when it rains it's too late".