Wikipedia Founder to Give Away Web Hosting

eldavojohn writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is going to be giving away free web hosting from his company's site Wikia. The company announced this 'free culture' movement at the current Le Web 3 conference in Paris. They somehow received a $4 million dollar investment package from Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and individual investors with no business model. Is this a dotcom bubble style mistake or just proof of Jimmy Wales' golden touch?" From the article: "Openserving will go further than Wikia's current services, by giving away hosting services and bandwidth, in addition to allowing site creators to keep the advertising revenue generated by the site. 'If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? Well, I don't know yet,' Penchina said. The software acquired with ArmchairGM will let Openserving customers create collaborative publishing sites, combining elements of blogs and wikis."

Not webhosting, wiki hosting

Well I guess its not automated account generation, I signed up 30 minutes ago and still haven't received welcome info.

Re:Not webhosting, wiki hosting

Their front page says "Openserving will go live shortly" which suggest it isn't live yet. When I've seen systems that accepted sign-ups before they were live in the past, its been a pretty mixed bag of systems that would provide a normal automated welcome response but you couldn't access the service till it was live, sites that would provide a "we got your registration and will process it when we are ready to accept users" response, and sites that didn't respond at all until they were live.

Obligatory underpants gnomes quote

'If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? Well, I don't know yet,' Penchina said.

Isn't this the real-life equivalent of the underpants gnome line?

1. Give away bandwidth and the storage
2. ??
3. Profit!

Maybe he's been reading too much /.

-Eric

My take on it

I don't have any idea where they think they're going to make money -- I wouldn't be forking over my dough to this guy and expecting any of it back, but then again I'm not a venture capitalist. I do think I understand a little more of what the site is about, though.

It's more than just "free web space," a la GeoCities. It's basically a prebuilt dynamic web site. You can take a look at one example here [openserving.com]. It's sort of like a miniature Digg. The site creator and its users write the stories, like a blog, and can then vote on them and comment.

I think the key is that the content of the sites is under the GFDL, in order to qualify for the free hosting. At least I think this is the case, because the site goes on and on about "free software and content". I think that's where Wales' master plan comes in; it's a way of encouraging people to create more free content. One assumes that if this really takes off, they'll charge for hosting of non-free materials. But in the short term, it might greatly build the amount of content that's available under a free license, and which can be incorporated into other projects, like Wikipedia and the Commons.

Really it looks a bit like Sourceforge, only for blog-ish sites rather than OSS software projects. They handle some of the site maintenance and backend work, and in return you get a free website...assuming you meet their standards. If you don't, then you can pay for hosting (theoretically, at some point in the future).

Easy Answer

'If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? '

They will make it up in volume!

Come on it's obvious

They somehow received a $4 million dollar investment package from Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and individual investors with no business model. Is this a dotcom bubble style mistake or just proof of Jimmy Wales' golden touch?

Free web hosting? Jimmy Wales? dubious investors? That's *got* to be something to do with pr0n...

Business Model?

Buyer beware is all I can say about investing in a project that doesn't have a clear direction for recouping the initial investment. They have an idea of what they want to do, and it seems like a worthy idea to me, but I'm not sure why companies would want to invest in a project where there's uncertainty like this in getting a return. It seems like this would be a better idea for individuals to support, like a foundation, rather than as a business venture.

This sounds

like its a gift to net-abusers like spammers, child porners, etc.
I hope they make sure that they get good ID of everyone who hosts stuff on their service and don't have some loophole where people can set up accounts with anonymous/fake ID.

Question

How is this different than, like, Blogspot or googlepages? And how does the 100% ad revenue thing work if you use Adsense?

Re:Question

How is this different than, like, Blogspot or googlepages?

The details of its features advertised by openserving.com [openserving.com] are different than either of those; its seems to me broadly similar to blogspot, though.

"Free Culture"

"Open source was the beginning. Free culture is what's happening next," Wikia CEO Gil Penchina said Monday, announcing the company's plans at the Le Web 3 conference in Paris on the future of social media.

Sorry to burst your bubble Gil, but here goes: Who's gonna unclog my toilet in thie "free culture"?

Re:"Free Culture"

Who's gonna unclog my toilet in thie "free culture"?

It won't matter, because in the "free culture" we'll all be so goddamn smug that our shit won't stink.

-Eric

WTF are the VCs thinking?

Yeah. I'd think the Wiki founder is 'open' minded so he thinks it's cool (according to what he said). But WTF are the VCs thinking giving money to basically handing them out??

Re:WTF are the VCs thinking?

I think VCs think along the lines: "4 mil is peanuts, and if this guy can make wikipedia - something every other schoolkid uses for homework, he probably can stumble upon something that can be monetized. So, we know that it is high risk, but it could be high profit too."
Anyway, for some vc's 4 mil is what their Yacht costs in maintenance ( year) .

Loads of Problems

I admit I am biased since I an in this industry but are they smoking something?

The only places which have offered free hosting have relied on ad revenue to make back the costs. What do they think is going to happen when the warez people hit the site? There goes the bandwidth, the storage and here come the problems. And what about the spammers who will flock to the free site to run the smtp mailers? They are going to spend so much time on fighting off this sort of crap from the legitimate people they won't have time for anything else. And apparently they are going to do this for free?

Hi there,

Hi there, people reading this article ten years in the future.

If Openserving was a giant success, then I am all for it. The commoditization of culture and expression is the future, and I should be noted as before my time. Find me in the present, give me gifts. We'll go do expression stuff together or something. You can cry into my neuroblog and listen to emo with me.

If Openserving was a huge flameout that eventually meant the end of the company for yanno, giving away things that take resources for free, then I am rightly skeptical and predict this as a stupid move that will waste lots of money and time. Find me in the present and we'll go to a brick-and-mortar store where you can purchase me a neuroblog. I don't know what that is yet, but it sounds exciting.

Only for free content...

They only host wikis for free if the content of the wiki is also under a free license.

An obvious business plan would be to charge people who want to use the Wikia for hosting non-free content. This has parallels in the free software world, where Troll Tech give away Qt for use by free software, but charge people who want to use Qt for non-free software. Cygnus did the same with Cygwin, and Alladin probably pioneered the business model with GhostScript.

The free wikis will in this scenario work as a combined advertisement and proof-of-concept for the paying customers.

Re:Only for free content...

Very good point.

I'd also add that perhaps they are not trying to "give away hosting" for a bunch of independant little pages, but are trying to create a community. If you look at their demo [openserving.com] (which is limited right now), it looks like they will be encouraging all the users to use a sort of "standard" wiki engine for all the content. I think the idea is to encourage people to generate content in a structured way.

Once done, the openserving top-page (or some other domain) can act as a neat aggregate of all of this, a portal to the various pages/projects. Perhaps this top-level page will have ads and this ad revenue is part of the business model. (Granted they make less money than if they take a cut of all ad revenue, but by letting users keep the ad-revenue for the sub-pages, they attract more users.)

I think there are many ways that this can generate money, but most people always think in terms of "making the most money" instead of "making a reasonable amount of profit." (See story about Craigslist currently on slashdot front page, for instance.)

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think there is a business model. Just because he is publically saying "I don't know yet" doesn't mean he doesn't have one (or probably several) ideas about how to make money. And the investors are probably thinking similarly.

That's so Web 1.0

Remember all those free hosting services? Where are they now?

Besides, web hosting is so cheap today. For under $10/month, you can have a full web site on a good commercial hosting service. [ezpublishing.com] You can use CGI, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL, and AJAX. You get a gigabyte of disk space and no limit on traffic.

Further down the food chain, there's 50megs.com [50megs.com], at $2.00/month. Free if you're willing to accept ads. Less space and fewer features.

If you don't want the bother of running a web site, there's Myspace and its clones. Geocities is still around, although now owned by Yahoo.

If you want to store public domain material of lasting value that others might someday need, you can get a free Internet Archive account [archive.org] and upload it there. They have petabytes of disk space. If you have software source, there's SourceForge. [sourceforge.net]

So who needs another free hosting service?

The question is...

I do wonder how many people will actually make use of this service. Lots of people still mistrust things that come for free, and even more people (usually rightfully) mistrust things that come completely without a business model.

Add to that the fact that web hosting is pretty affordable these days. If you had a website that actually mattered (say, for business), would you build it on top of something that appears as dodgy as this - or would you just buy "proper" hosting for a little extra cash? I tend to think the latter.

Beginning of the end of paid shared hosting plans?

Could this be the begining of the end of the paid hosting business ? I wonder what will happen to all those web hosts who are providing shared hosting plan now. If this trend catches on, only dedicated hosting will be profitable for these professional web hosting providers.

Having said that, I welcome this new venture by WikiPedia founder.

The Catch...

Anyone can modify your website.

It seems pretty obvious

You don't attract any attention from clients by giving them the same thing as Geocities or Angelfire.

You say "We must be crazy! This is so awesome for everyone else!" loop them in, get your numbers up to critical mass, and then change the terms of the contract to increase your cut of advertising revenue.

"Web hosting"?

If you go to openserving.com, they already have a description and tour, and its not really a traditional web hosting service. Its more like blogspot, though the details of the features are different (like the "democratic" sorting.)

I see a different problem...

There seem to be a lot of posts on how free web hosting will or will not be successful. That's not what I see in this story at all. I see a big huge giant

>They somehow received a $4 million dollar investment package from Bessemer Venture Partners,

This could mean the end of Wikipedia! Seriously. Every time an investment company gets involved, all they seem to do is destroy companies. Wikipedia could have limped on forever, creating a better and better site and making everyone happy. Now in a few years these investors are going to start saying "Yeah, users love you, but why aren't you making a profit?" Everything goes downhill from here. It's not that they are trying to shut it down, but you can't go from living on a shoestring to being funded back to living on a shoestring AND owing all that money to repay the funding--that last step leaves you less than a year from bankruptcy.

You know, if Microsoft really wanted to kill Linux, they should just start loansharking--um I mean "Funding" all the groups that will accept it. After 2 or 3 years of living off the funding, call in the loans. It wouldn't stop all work, of course, but it would sure break up the large groups and confuse everyone about ownership--enough to possibly destroy the movement. Oh crap, I shouldn't have typed that. They already started after Novell!

3 /. headlines

Three slashdot headlines in a row, one about what the internet can be [slashdot.org] (simple and efficient and useful and not greedy), what the internet may become [slashdot.org] (whatever venture capitalists may spare on 'out-there' ideas) and what consultants think it should be [slashdot.org] (who cares)... The only headline missing is about the latest google news.

Codebase

I'm curious about the code base. For the screenshots it seems a lot like MediaWiki, but with other extensions I've not seen before allowing comments on pages and voting on stories and comments. Anyone know what they are using?

Rich guy turns generous ?

Once every 50 years some rich guy remembers when he had nothing and wants to give back. Maybe this is the case. Maybe he'll even just start sending us money ! We don't need no stinking business plan !

Here's One Way the Could Make Money

Some companies just profit by people being on the web. Some big search companies who sell ads, and who really like Jimmy. These, or this, big company wants all info on the web, but they don't want people to get spooked [google-watch.org], so they get Jimmy to host the data, and they spend their time selling ads, and giving Jimmy the kick backs.

By the way, free web hosting sounds different than "here's your personal wiki page, good luck maintaining it."

Anyway, that's just one way the could make a buck.

Wales is no fool

Based on his record, Jimmy Wales is no fool and I imagine that he has some plan in mind to eventually make money for his investors. His concept, whatever it may be may, or may not, be nefarious. It might be something as simple as someday tying optional money making ventures to a major, largely free of charge website. Which means creating the web site first.

In point of fact, Wales has done us -- all of us -- a major favor with the Wikipedia. He didn't have to. I'm inclined to cut Wales some slack on this. Let's see what the man is up to before we condemn him.

They've always done this at the old site...

But I hope they do something about people deleting my site over and over again and replacing it with some crap.

My site (If it hasn't been deleted!) [wikipedia.org]


Just kidding/avoiding a troll-mod!

I would have registered, but...

...registrants are forced into a list of categories and subcategories that were obviously created by someone who needs to get out a little more. Examples:

There's Christianity, Islam, "Jewish" and Hinduism, but no Buddhism?!?

Under music, there are no subcategories for any particular instrument, only 12 genres-- no old-time country or polka?!?

I think the "business model" is also apparent from the registration form: Make it too confusing to collect! There's a field called "google ad code", whose so-called help explains: "enter your google ad code to receive 100% of the revenue from your Openserve". No word on where to get this google ad code or whether they mean "code" in the sense of "account number", in the sense of "program source", or in the sense of "ordinance." (I'm guessing not the last.)

Awesomo!

Wow [geocities.com], free [anglefire.com] web [2hot2cool.com] hosting! [fortunecity.com] How [freewebpage.org] could [myspace.com] it [250free.com] fail [tripod.com]?

Summer of Code and now FreeServing

Wow, all we need is 3 days of Python and (iPod) Music (in Silicon Valley).

Business deserves better

There's another wiki that's just getting started, called http://www.centiare.com/ [centiare.com]. It's much like Wikipedia, but with two HUGE differences:

(A) If you're a business, organization, or individual, there is ownership of your Directory page. No more vandals saying you went bankrupt because you lost a pickle-eating contest.

(B) Semantic tagging. If you know what this means, I needn't say more. If you don't know what it means, check out the ASK query at the bottom of http://www.centiare.com/Portal:List [centiare.com], and you should begin to understand the wild potential of semantic tags in a wiki environment.

Jimmy Wales did a wonderful thing by co-creating Wikipedia; but in his pursuit of "Neutral Point of View" and eliminating all appearances of "conflict of interest", he's lost sight of the fact that 95% of editors of Wikipedia have a point of view and/or a conflict of interest. They are all welcome at Centiare.com.

Re:Translation

In other words, "what's the business model? Well we scam money from investors, and have a damn good time spending it. When the money runs out, we get new jobs on the high-flier reputation of running a multi-million dollar venture."

Actually, the business model is that Jimbo Wales spent the early part of his life making disgusting amounts of money in the futures market. It's not so much "what's the business model" as "when is the time going to run out?" I don't think Jimbo is really concerned with making money -- if he was, Wikipedia, one of the most popular sites on the internet, might have an ad or two on it.