About
Bomis, Inc. (from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was an American dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.
The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. The site subsequently focused on content geared to a male audience, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women. Bomis became successful after focusing on pornography. "Bomis Babes" was devoted to erotic images; the "Bomis Babe Report" featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. "The Babe Engine" helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women.
Bomis created Nupedia as a free online encyclopedia (with content submitted by experts) but it had a tedious, slow review process. Wikipedia was initially launched by Bomis to provide content for Nupedia, and was a for-profit venture (a Bomis subsidiary) through the end of 2002. As the costs of Wikipedia rose with its popularity, Bomis' revenues declined; these losses were compounded by the dot-com crash. Since Wikipedia was a drain on Bomis' resources, Wales and philosophy graduate student Larry Sanger decided to fund the project as a nonprofit. Sanger was laid off from Bomis in 2002. Nupedia content was merged into Wikipedia, and it ceased in 2003.
The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation began in 2003 with a board of trustees composed of Bomis' three founders (Wales, Davis, and Shell) and was first headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, Bomis' location. Wales used about US$100,000 of revenue from Bomis to fund Wikipedia before the decision to shift the encyclopedia to non-profit status. Wales stepped down from his role as CEO of Bomis in 2004. Shell was CEO of the company in 2005, while on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. Wales edited Wikipedia in 2005 to remove the characterizations of Bomis as providing softcore pornography, which attracted media attention; Wales expressed regret for his actions. The Atlantic gave Bomis the nickname "Playboy of the Internet", and the term caught on in other media outlets. Scholars have described Bomis as a provider of softcore pornography.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tim Shell, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2
Companies
Early life and education
Background
Jimmy Wales left a study track at Indiana University as a PhD candidate to work in finance before completing his doctoral dissertation. In 1994 Wales was hired by Michael Davis, CEO of finance company Chicago Options Associates, as a trader focusing on futures contracts and options. Wales was adept at determining future movements of foreign currencies and interest rates; he was successful in Chicago, became independently wealthy, and was director of research at Chicago Options Associates from 1994 to 2000. He became acquainted with Tim Shell from email lists discussing philosophy.
Wales wanted to participate in the online-based entrepreneurial ventures which were increasingly popular and successful during the mid-1990s. His experience (from gaming in his youth) impressed on him the importance of networking. Wales was interested in computer science, experimenting with source code on the Internet and improving his skill at computer programming. In his spare time after work at Chicago Options Associates, Wales constructed his own web browser. While at the firm, he noted the successful 1995 initial public offering of Netscape Communications.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tim Shell (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Career
Occupation: businessperson.5
Personal life
Philanthropy
Foundation
Wales co-founded Bomis in 1996, with business associates Tim Shell, and his then-manager Michael Davis, as a for-profit corporation with joint ownership. Wales was its chief manager. In 1998 he moved from Chicago to San Diego to work for Bomis, and then to St. Petersburg, Florida (where the company subsequently relocated).
The staff at Bomis was originally about five employees. Its 2000 staff included programmer Toan Vo, Andrew McCague and system administrator Jason Richey; Wales employed his high-school friend and best man in his second wedding, Terry Foote, as advertising director. In June 2000, Bomis was one of five network partners of Ask Jeeves. The majority of the revenue that came in to Bomis was generated through advertising. The most successful time for Bomis was during its venture as a member of the NBC web portal NBCi; this collapsed at the end of the dot-com bubble.
Although Bomis is not an acronym, the name stemmed from "Bitter Old Men in Suits" (as Wales and Shell called themselves in Chicago). The site began as a web portal, trying a number of ideas (including serving as an access point for information about Chicago). It later focused on male-oriented content, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women.
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Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
By 2003 Wikipedia had grown to 100,000 articles in its English-language version, and it became difficult for Bomis to continue financially supporting the project. With Wikipedia a drain on the company's resources, Wales and Sanger decided to fund the project on a non-profit basis. Bomis laid off most of its employees to continue operating, since Wikipedia was not generating revenue. The company owned Wikipedia from its creation through 2003, and Wales used about $100,000 of Bomis' revenue to fund Wikipedia before the decision to shift the encyclopedia to non-profit status.
In June 2003 Wikipedia was transferred to a nascent non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which was formed as a charitable institution to supervise Wikipedia and its associated wiki-based sites. When the foundation was established, its staff began to solicit public funding and Bomis turned Wikipedia over to the non-profit. All Bomis-owned hardware used to run Wikipedia-associated websites was donated to the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wales transferred Wikipedia-related copyrights from Bomis to the foundation. It was first headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Bomis was located. The foundation shifted Wikipedia's dependence away from Bomis, allowing it to purchase hardware for expansion.
The Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees was initially composed of Bomis' three founders: Jimmy Wales and his two business partners, Michael Davis and Tim Shell. Shell and Davis were appointed to the board by Wales, but after Wikipedia community members complained that the board was composed of appointed individuals, the first elections were held in 2004. Two community members, Florence Devouard and Angela Beesley, were elected to the board of trustees.
In August 2004 Wales was chief executive officer of Bomis, and on September 20 Wikipedia reached the million-article mark on an expenditure of $500,000 (most directly from Wales). In November 2004 he told the St. Petersburg Times he no longer controlled Bomis' day-to-day operations, but retained ownership as a shareholder. In 2005, Tim Shell was CEO of Bomis and one of the board members overseeing Wikipedia. Shell remained CEO of Bomis in 2006, becoming vice-president of the Wikimedia Foundation and continuing to sit on its board. Bomis co-founder Michael Davis became treasurer of the Wikimedia Foundation that year. Wales told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007 that although he retained partial ownership of Bomis, "It's pretty much dead." According to the Internet Archive, the Bomis website was last accessible with content in 2010; when accessed in 2013 by the archive, it had a welcome message for PetaBox. When accessed in 2014 by the archive, the website featured a blank white page with a line of text saying "Hello, world!".
From Wikipedia’s article on Tim Shell (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataTim Shell on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaTim Shell on Wikipedia
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- 8WikidataBomis, Founder
- 9Wikimedia CommonsTim Shell photo by File:Tim_Shell_Wikimedia.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0