Wikipedia wants to charge Google, Amazon, and Apple for using its content | Mashable

March 17, 2021March 16, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Everybody uses Wikipedia.

It’s currently the 8th most visited website in the U.S. and the 13th most trafficked site in the world. The website bills itself as the “free encyclopedia,” providing knowledge free of charge to a global user base. However, the nonprofit which runs Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, hopes that it soon won’t be free for everybody.

Don’t worry, it’ll still likely be free for you, dear Mashable reader. But for companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, Wikipedia is hoping to charge them for publishing its content.

A new report by Wired looks into a brand new division under the Wikimedia umbrella called Wikimedia Enterprise. In a first for the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise will offer a paid service targeting Wikipedia’s biggest users: Big Tech companies.

Wikipedia Has Won | Peter Mehit

January 4, 2016January 11, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

“These statistics,” I said, “Where did you get them?” The writing was solid and everything made sense, but there was no source attribution.

It was 2005. We’ve just gotten serious staff for the first time. The writer was a fresh faced woman from Texas, who, by the way, possessed serious brains and a dangerous wit. She answers me confidently.

“Wikipedia.”

“The open source online encyclopedia?,” I asked. Wikipedia was only four years old and notoriously inaccurate. I wanted sources as close to the information as we could get.

Continue reading “Wikipedia Has Won | Peter Mehit” →

5 Things to Know Before Using Wikipedia as a Marketing Tool | All Business

June 15, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Wikipedia has been, and will continue to be, one of the best marketing tools for your business. Having a Wikipedia page will not only help lift your brand to the first page of Google, it will also help increase the page rank of your website after it’s linked to your Wikipedia page.

Marketers have been using Wikipedia for years to help clients climb in rank. After all, Google gives quite a bit of authority to Wikipedia; even having a simple link will help with your marketing efforts.

I make my living editing Wikipedia, spending countless hours each day creating and cleaning up entries for various clients. Throughout my time, I have run into the dangers of using Wikipedia as a marketing tool. If not done properly, a page can cause more harm than you can imagine.

Before you jump into editing Wikipedia for yourself or a client, there are a few things that you should familiarize yourself with: