Wikipedia Raises $6.2 Million In Obama Style

Written by Igor Beuker on January 7th, 2009 |

Online fund raising in Barack Obama style. With the help of over 125.000 donors from around the world, the Wikimedia Foundation raised a total of $6.2 million, sustaining Wikipedia for the foreseeable future. The money will be used to maintain and grow the foundation’s technical infrastructure.

“This campaign has proven that Wikipedia matters to its users, and that our users strongly support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising,” Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote in a thank you letter posted on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Web site. “We deeply appreciate the generosity of our supporters.”

The Wikimedia Foundation was behind in its total contributions in late December, but Wales published a personal appeal on the foundation’s site to increase funding. In the eight days trailing that message, more than 50,000 contributions flooded in, totaling $2 million and closing the gap toward the goal.

The Wikimedia Foundation is still accepting funding on its donations page.

Do you remember the start of wisdom of crowds idea Wikipedia? Many non internet believers judged and criticized Wikipedia in a preliminary stage saying: “an encyclopedia like this can never meet the accuracy of the existing encyclopedia’s.”

Maybe or mostly, we tend to judge based on assumptions. Or we do not like it, since we do not “do not do it ourselves yet” or because we “do not like it ourselves yet”. That’s the same mistake many marketers made on: internet, instant messaging, gaming and more.

Maybe we need to leave assumptions out of our professional judgments?? To ASS-U-ME equals: Ass-You and Me! Maybe we need to perceive things with an open mind, before we start judging?

Isn’t marketing all about observing trends and new consumer behavior to adapt to this behavior? And don’t worry, if you are open mind or a bit more patient, there will be enough time left to have “your judgment day” after a while.

Are you happy we saved Wikipedia?

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