All for all and all for one

On you and you with Mr. Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, the man who now wants to compete against Google. With the help of the world.

The nice thing about living in San Francisco is not the weather. Most people believe that the sun always seems the people here and most of the time lying on the beach - after all we are talking about California. And then they get flown to run in shorts and T-shirts through the city and away from the ubiquitous cold summer fog various body parts. All these people had said you are better off in Florida, Las Vegas or San Diego.

No, the beauty of San Francisco - next to the Golden Gate, Sausalito and Tiburon, Angel Iceland, Berkeley and many other things that have nothing to do with the topic of this blog - are the proximity to Silicon Valley and the fact that there are facilities such as the Commonwealth Club is. In this venerable institution, now 101 years old, look past all sorts of exciting people, give lectures and giving interviews, and if you're lucky, you can chat to them afterwards to say hello and a little bit.

Jimmy Wales on Wednesday was at the Commonwealth Club, the founder of Wikipedia. He sat in a chair on stage and corresponded entirely to the image of the inconspicuous Internet mogul, as he was recently described in the magazine "Fast Company": a 40-year-old former Wall Street trader, soon came to prosperity, it is can afford to run his online encyclopedia project as a lover. (Wikipedia is a nonprofit foundation, and Wales receives no salary.) Jimmy Donal Wales this loves it casually, called like "Jimbo", speaks in a gentle voice, never misses an opportunity to rave with glowing eyes of his young daughter, and ostentatiously wearing no shirt, but a T-shirt under the jacket.

But there is a second Jimmy Wales - one that just does not like sitting still without a jacket and trousers on stage and its ambitions by the success of Wikipedia is far from satisfied. This Jimmy Wales, the former financial manager, has big steps: First, he wants his company Wikia - can earn the money, can and should, unlike the Wikipedia Foundation - to build a kind of digital publishing community. He calls it "the rest of the library to fill" - where the role of the Great Wikipedia, the Brockhaus' takes and the many, many wikis that arise just from around the world, meet the individual books in the library.

There are (according to Wikipedia) is currently over 3000 wikis in over 50 languages, on a wide range of topics, ranging from autism on Lego and the Muppets to World of Warcraft - currently the most popular wiki of all. "It's fantastic, what with things the rest of the library is filled," says the head of a member, means for each new topic you money, because it allowed his company to all the wiki pages that fill its users to view . switch

Ironically, these ads are marketed through Google - precisely those company who wants to take Wales into the next sighting, with a search engine that operates on the principle of community. About the way he did, unfortunately, less than elicit the why: "For me there is almost a political statement," said Wales. "It is a statement about what we should expect as a citizen of the world of search engines that direct most of the traffic on the Internet." Google, Yahoo & Co. are hermetically sealed for him, companies that can not look at the cards - what it must be said, good reasons are: The search engines keep the methods by which they evaluate and Hit List, and even so largely secret because there are far too many operators of websites out there that try to artificially boost its popularity, so as to make the hit list next to land up.
Wales is believed that search engine spamming is the lesser evil and overcome with the help of the community makes. "We should have some degree of openness, transparency, and opportunity to get involved expect," he cautions. "All this is extremely important." So why now to begin his attempt at a sort of "Wikihoogle" search engine against the established competition. "I think we can build something, and I want the web community comes together to try it," says Wales. The "Fast Company" has already declaring him to "Google's worst nightmare" is, but then it unpleasant. "My mother bought the same ten books," Wales told the audience into laughter at the Commonwealth Club, "but I feel in this role as a Google killer probably not." Right now stand, the project "at the very beginning."

Klein has also started, however once his Wikipedia, and look at what's become of it: More than six million records in over 130 languages, the online encyclopedia one day and on the number of visitors is counted as the ninth most popular site on the Internet. Well, 280,000 people participate in the project in one way or another - a voluntary, unpaid. The Wikimedia Foundation, which keeps the busy site running, while only seven employees. "The ninth-largest site, with seven full-time jobs, which is a ratio, with no one else can match", is pleased to Wales.

However, the popularity has a downside: The cost for the computers that store all the dictionary entries, and the data lines that serve all the visitors - these costs are rising as fast as the popularity of Wikipedia. Last year was the Wikimedia Foundation spent about a million dollars, "primarily for hardware and data traffic," and this year it will probably be two to three million. Nevertheless, Wales is not worried that the foundation could slip into the Meanies - he had so many friends in Silicon Valley, he said following his official website that he actually would run only with the collection bag through the valley of the art to provide sufficient raise money, it should sometime be tight. But then it does not currently see out anyway, because the donations grow as well.
Whether he, a successful Wall Street man and entrepreneur who Wikimedia Stifung also give yourself a little, I wanted to know. Wales hesitated for a moment, smiled mischievously and said: "Money is not - just my life." Again true.