Interesting point from Network World entitled Wikipedia: On the skids?. Apparently Florence Devouard, chairperson of the Wikimedia Foundation board, said that the recent US$1M donations round will only cover a portion of the site's US$5M operating expenses.
I find the numbers a little funny -- according to the Wikimedia Foundation finance report, operating expenses for 2006 were around US$800K. I realize that the site's traffic has nearly doubled since this time last year, and that they're hiring more full time staffers, but that still puts the project's expenses at under US$2M. I'm not sure I understand how the US$5M number was calculated.
I think the Wikimedia Foundation could be a much bigger and globally more important organization. With advertising on Wikipedia, to the tune of an estimated US$100M, the Wikimedia Foundation would have enough money to support its Web site and tens of millions more to buy Open Content paperback books for poor children in developing countries.
tags: wikipedia advertisement florence devouard wikimedia foundation