Despite tough economy, Wikimedia raises $20 million in donations
Wikimedia Foundation is marking the new year with a hefty deposit into its coffers.
The San Francisco-based non-profit group that maintains Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, officially closed its annual fundraising drive on Tuesday. The total amount raised: $20 million.
That’s a record, and a step up from the $16 million Wikimedia raised last year during a nearly two-month-long fundraising effort.
Raising $20 million may seem commonplace by the standards of today’s super-heated venture capital start-up world. But given the difficult economic environment, and some of the struggles that other non-profits have experienced raising money, Wikimedia’s result is notable.
The drive garnered some big-ticket donations, such as $500,000 from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife’s foundation. But according to Wikimedia, the majority of the pledges came from more than a million ordinary folks coughing up donations in the $20 range.
The money will help Wikimedia — whose more than 20 million Wikipedia articles are written and edited for free by volunteers — pay for the technology and infrastructure necessary to keep the service growing, develop new features for the website and bolster its legal defense fund.
Wikimedia’s record-breaking fundraising drive still isn’t enough to cover the 90-employee organization’s operating budget. According to Wikimedia communications head Jay Walsh, the operating budget for the 2011 fiscal year ending June 30 is $28 million.
Google’s Brin, wife donate $500,000 to keep Wikipedia going
Very few have missed Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ picture looming on all of the pages of the user-generated information website.
But that may soon go away, thanks to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki.
The duo donated $500,000 to the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and its sister sites, through their Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
The popular website had kicked off its annual fundraiser this week with Wales appealing to its readers to donate toward the costs of servers, bandwidth, maintenance, development and employee salaries. His argument — donate to keep the site free of ads and other commerce.
“This is how Wikipedia works: people use it, they like it, and so they help pay for it, to keep it freely available for themselves and for everyone around the world,” said Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, thanking Brin and Wojcicki for the support.
The foundation has already raised about $725,000 with $275,000 left to meet their goal, according to the website.
Another big donor and Wales’ picture will disappear until next year. Anyone up?
Yeah, because ads are so much more annoying than Jimmy’s face plastered on every page. Begging for money is more primitive than commerce. He should search his site for “Market”.
Sergey’s secret Google projects, and the challenge of 1,000 blooming flowers
What’s Sergey Brin been up to since his pal Larry Page took the reins as CEO of Google, the Internet search company that the pair co-founded 13 years ago?
Brin, who spoke at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, discussed his new role at Google, which he said is focused on advanced research projects like Google’s famous self-driving cars, as well as some “infrastructure” projects.
Brin said he was optimistic that Google’s so-called “autonomous cars” would eventually make it to market – though he noted that the vehicles still required a good deal of research and development before being ready for prime time.
The cars have successfully completed a 1,000-mile challenge, covering tricky terrain such as San Francisco’s steep and wind-y Lombard Street without human intervention, Brin told a small group of reporters during a media briefing that followed his on-stage appearance.
But, he said, “we need to move on to doing a million miles. And the level of reliability that we need for a real consumer product is high. And we’re getting there.”
Brin told reporters that Google remains committed to the spirit of open innovation within the company, including the famous 20 percent time that allows Google engineers to devote time to side-projects.
But he said that Google’s “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach to product development created a glut of products that were not always up to Google standards.
I think google outstanding at what you do…
meine eigene webseite Here:http://www.tirek.de
Google+ to Facebook: TMI!
Vic Gundotra, Google’s head of social, doesn’t care about every song his friends are listening to and every article they’ve read.
“We do not believe in over-sharing,” he said at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Gundotra may not have said “Facebook,” but his comments were aimed directly at the world’s No.1 social networking service, which recently introduced a so-called “frictionless sharing” feature in which a user can elect to have all their online activities – such as the names of the videos they’re watching and the songs they’re listening to – automatically broadcast to their friends.
“Curation matters,” Gundotra said. “There is a reason why every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth.”
Gundotra’s fledgling social network, Google+, has only a fraction of Facebook’s more than 750 million users. And many observers have wondered whether the world really needs Google+, given that it doesn’t do anything drastically different from Facebook.
With Facebook increasingly pushing the boundaries on the amount of personal information that people share online, Google may have found a soundbyte-ready raison d’etre (that is, in addition to the strategic rationale of preventing Facebook from eating Google’s lucrative online advertising business).
“We want to do social in a way that is more like real life, where you actually take time to think about how you express your thoughts, your ideas,” Gundotra said.
“a user can elect to have all their online activities – such as the names of the videos they’re watching and the songs they’re listening to – automatically broadcast to their friends”
Wow, that’s just way beyond narcissistic. What in the world makes people think they’re so d*mned interesting that anyone gives a flying fig about what YouTube video they’re currently watching? I’ve even told my own brother to stop tweeting every restaurant he dines at. I would never annoy my friends like that. At least, if I want to keep them.
Tech wrap: Breaking down Zynga’s possible IPO delay
One of tech’s most anticipated public offerings of the year could be delayed, according to a report in the New York Post on Monday. Online gaming company Zynga may hold off on its IPO until November said The Post, citing a “source close to the company.”
The delay is partly related to questions the SEC has about how Zynga measures its daily and monthly users, as well as its bookings, CNBC reported. “Zynga’s accounting measures are less worrisome to the SEC than Groupon’s, says one person familiar with the matter, but the agency is nonetheless working to make Zynga’s prospectus as accessible to investors as possible,” writes CNBC’s Kate Kelly.
Renowned venture capitalist Alan Patricof, managing director of Greycroft Partners LLC, told Bloomberg TV he thinks Zynga is merely waiting for a “hole in the market,” which he described as a one or two-week period where the markets are up and the underwriting bank “calls up and says we’re going tomorrow.”
Fortune.com’s Dan Primack calls Zynga’s IPO delay a “non-story.” “Is it really news that market volatility might push things back a few weeks? … This is not a story about Zynga losing anything, let along its ‘zing.’ Need proof. Just try substituting any other IPO candidate where the NY Post writes Zynga.”
News of Zynga’s potential delay comes just 36 hours after Bloomberg reported the company restructured its shareholder agreement to give founder Mark Pincus unparalleled voting power. The board approved three tiers of stock, giving each one of Pincus’s shares 70 votes, up from 10, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg. The move gives Pincus more power than LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Zynga has asked current shareholders to agree to the new stock structure by Sept. 2.
Wild news on Apple, Google changes? Not if you’re an analyst
It has certainly been an interesting week in Silicon Valley as two of the most closely watched companies in the world shuffled their executive suites. On Monday, Apple announced that its chief executive and charismatic leader Steve Jobs was taking a temporary medical leave – his third since 2004 — a day before Apple released its quarterly results. On Thursday, Google reported a stellar Q4 and dropped that Larry Page would be stepping into the role of chief executive, as Eric Schmidt takes up the executive chairman position.
Big news, right? So it’s surprising then that analysts who have the opportunity to quiz management during earnings calls failed to mention anything about the changes. Not one analyst asked about the C-suite during the Google and Apple calls. Google even made its three top executives, Schmidt, Page and Sergey Brin available for short period on Thursday’s call. The three analysts in the queue pitched questions about the following subjects: Google’s real estate purchase in New York, government outreach and social networking plans.
Google’s Brin: Make smartphone apps searchable
For more than a decade, Google has reigned supreme as the main gateway to online information.
But with consumers increasingly accessing the Internet through specialized apps on smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Web search engine could be at risk of playing a smaller role in the Internet’s next phase.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has an answer: Make apps searchable.
On the sidelines of the press event in San Francisco to unveil Google Instant on Wednesday, Brin offered some thoughts on the future of apps and search.
“I do think with respect to apps, it would be nice to adopt some kind of URL conventions, so that even content within apps is in fact searchable, and I think that it would be nice to adopt some kind of standard in that respect, and that would benefit all search engines and all users.”
Has Google had talks with any organizations about making this happen?
“I don’t think we’ve pushed too far yet, because typically most of the apps that do surface content are usually reflections of websites today anyway. But if there starts to be more unique content in apps, I think that would be a nice thing.”
Ridiculous conclusion.
Google are positioning to become the Global leader as both a telecoms carrier and phone handset interface provider.
So says this 63 yr old Telecoms consultant.
Sun Valley: Jane Goodall and the primary primates
It’s day three of the Sun Valley media conference and the event has started to feel like a Jane Goodall documentary, in which we’re Jane and the moguls are the apes who have become comfortable letting us observe and record their movements. Several media executives groggily making their way to the morning’s first session (scheduled to kick off at 7:30), stopped to chat with the throng of press waiting to greet them.
Liberty Media Chairman John Malone voiced concerns about the economy for nearly 10 minutes while NBC’s Jeff Zucker, who once warned of the risks to media companies of trading analog dollars for digital pennies and later upped the exchange rate to dimes, posited the idea that the media industry was now within reach of collecting digital quarters. It’s change we can believe in.
Later on Thursday, Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt (who for reasons unknown has been toting a camera with a beefy zoom lens throughout the event, even after-hours at the bar on Wednesday evening) will hold his traditional Sun Valley press roundtable, possibly with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are here.
As for Steve Jobs, it appears that he is a no-show.
And while hoops superstar Lebron James mingled with the executives at Sun Valley last year, he will probably end up overshadowing the gathering of media bigwigs from afar this year when he announces his choice of a new home team on Thursday night.
(John Malone does his media thing at Sun Valley. Photo: Reuters)
Google’s Brin clears the air (sort of) on Twitter
Before this week’s dueling Google and Microsoft search licensing deals with Twitter, a recurring rumor in Silicon Valley had Google trying to buy Twitter outright.
So when Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Thursday, the stage was set to finally put the record straight.
Showing that ten years in the media spotlight have not been wasted on him however, Brin displayed a deft command of language to duck the question.
Web 2.0 organizer John Battelle: Did you try to buy Twitter?
Brin: I did not try to buy Twitter.
Brin then added, “But if companies approach us we definitely consider any opportunities to buy.” But the resultant ambiguity about whether Brin was speaking about himself personally, or Google, effectively left the question unanswered. Nicely played.
Meanwhile, the list of Internet giants partnering with Twitter came close to growing to three companies, after AOL CEO Tim Armstrong opined about the role of real time data at AOL during his talk.
Yesterday, everyone HAD to have a MySpace account and businesses jumped all over it thinking it was the marketing wave of the future. Then it was Facebook, companies jumped into that, but the way Facebook is set up, it’s harder for companies to target users for their advertisers. Twitter, yes, it’s another fad that companies are jumping all over thinking it’s the new marketing wave of the future. See a pattern here? As soon as it becomes “cool” for people to have, companies try to butt their way into it and the more marketing and spam they generate, the general user becomes uninterested. Facebook has it working because the companies trying to market there can’t just barge their way into the user’s experience. They can’t customize their Facebook page beyond the content and profile picture, so right there, it’s less annoying and obtrusive feeling. They only market to people who become their friend or a “fan” so people choose what companies they marketed to. Facebook, too, will someday succumb to the next “big thing” in social networking. It’s the way online user-generated content works, what’s popular today won’t be tomorrow, if you have the right idea with the right technology and proper ways of implementing it, social networking and media is the perfect “get rich quick” scheme. You create something that becomes HUGE (MySpace, for example) and then sell it and when it comes crashing back down, it’s not your problem, you already have the money from the sale of your tech.
Google’s chief: small salary, big expenses
Protecting Google’s head honcho got more affordable in 2008, but the cost of air travel for CEO Eric Schmidt and his entourage rose sharply.
According to Google’s annual proxy statement, released on Tuesday, Google paid out $106,201 “on Eric’s behalf for costs related to aircraft chartered for Google business on which family and friends flew in 2008.”
That’s a good deal more than the $4,000 Schmidt’s friends and family racked up flying the friendly skies in 2007 or the $22,456 in tax “gross ups” for air travel in 2006.
It’s not clear whether the extra costs related to more frequent globe trotting by Schmidt and his kin, or perhaps reflect the volatile cost of jet fuel, which surged in the first half of 2008, before receding later in the year.
G8 it shows not only politicians are expensive in nature but also ceo’s of big firms ……….u understand wat i mean right
