How Wikipedia ranks
The latest “Top Global Web Properties” report from comScore (September 2006) places Wikipedia-related projects right at the top of an impressive list of web sites.
It is clearly the #1 nonprofit and #1 reference site in the world by traffic. Though these stats (and Alexa, Nielsen, Hitwise) should be taken very skeptically, this certainly is consistent with previous rankings and practical experience.
Some observations -
- YouTube.com was bought for US $1.6 billion (stock swap) and has roughly half the traffic of Wikipedia.
- Mozilla Firefox is making in the “order of magnitude” of US $72 million from the Google search box in the web browser and corresponding Google Ads.
If Wikipedia started to take in a revenue stream from a Google search box or Amazon referral fees, given its traffic, it would certainly rake in tens of millions if not more. But advertising and revenue deals have caused community splits within Wikipedia in the past, so it’s not likely to be tried again soon.
Wikimedia Foundation’s budget is currently very modest - five fulltime employees, and two halftime. Bandwidth and hosting costs are relatively low at under six figures a month. The Foundation depends on individual donations from users, but could do so much more with its brand for other funding sources.
How does Wikipedia monetize its content and brand without crossing its community?
That’s the billion dollar question, literally.
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Top Global Web Properties Total Unique Visitors (000),age 15+ * September 2006 Total Worldwide - Home and Work Locations Source: comScore World Metrix |
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Web Properties |
Total Unique Visitors (000) Sept-06 |
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Worldwide Total (Age 15+) |
726,749 |
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Microsoft Sites |
505,479 |
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Yahoo! Sites |
480,641 |
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Google Sites |
467,498 |
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eBay |
237,327 |
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Time Warner Network |
217,843 |
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Wikipedia Sites |
154,848 |
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Amazon Sites |
133,518 |
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Fox Interactive Media |
117,789 |
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Ask Network |
112,768 |
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Adobe Sites |
95,196 |
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Apple Computer, Inc. |
94,909 |
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Lycos, Inc. |
91,126 |
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CNET Networks |
84,259 |
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YouTube.com |
81,019 |
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Monster Worldwide |
60,162 |
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Complete data can be found at comScore.
