Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993, and the concept of a free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia was proposed by Richard Stallman in 1998.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software.
Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She has been the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia since August 2016.
Scribd Inc. is an American e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its open publishing platform.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF), is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best known as the hosting platform for Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia, it also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software.
BuddyTV is an entertainment-based website, which generates content about television programs and sporting events. The website publishes information about celebrity and related entertainment news through a series of articles, entertainment profiles, actor biographies and user forums. On 31 December 2014, Smart TV manufacturer VIZIO acquired BuddyTV's parent Advanced Media Research Group, Inc., in order to expand content and service offerings. The site was shut down on 22 May 2018. The site was later relaunched on 30 August 2021 by a small web content company with the intent to resurrect BuddyTV.
Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name 'Wikipedia', and wrote much of Wikipedia's original governing policy, including "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules." Sanger has worked on other online projects, including Nupedia, Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium, WatchKnowLearn, Reading Bear, Infobitt, Everipedia, the Knowledge Standards Foundation and the encyclosphere. He also advised blockchain company Phunware and the nonprofit online American political encyclopedia Ballotpedia.
Fandom is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics. The privately held, for-profit Delaware company was founded in October 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Fandom was acquired in 2018 by TPG Inc. and Jon Miller through Integrated Media Co.
Sue Gardner is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.
Patheos is a non-denominational, non-partisan online media company providing information and commentary from various religious and nonreligious perspectives.
HomeAway was a vacation rental marketplace. It operated through 50 websites in 23 languages through which it offered rentals of cabins, condos, castles, villas, barns, and farmhouses.
The Arcus Foundation is an international charitable foundation focused on issues related to LGBT rights, social justice, ape conservation, and environmental preservation. The foundation's stated mission is "to ensure that LGBT people and our fellow apes thrive in a world where social and environmental justice are a reality."
Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows people to solicit funds for an idea, charity, or start-up business. Indiegogo charges a 5% fee on contributions. This charge is in addition to Stripe credit card processing charges of 3% + $0.30 per transaction. Fifteen million people visit the site each month.
HitFix, or HitFix.com, was an entertainment news website that launched in December 2008 specializing in breaking entertainment news, insider information, and reviews and critiques of film, music, and television. In mid-2010 HitFix crossed the 1,000,000 unique users per month milestone.
9GAG is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Graphiq is a semantic technology company that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly create interactive data-driven infographics. Its intent is similar to Wolfram Alpha which is designed to provide users with direct information on a variety of subjects rather than going through a search engine.
Jay Gould is an American tech entrepreneur and the founder & CEO of Yashi. Gould is also an active angel investor, and has backed web-based startups including DogVacay, Tout, Buffer, and Fitocracy.
WikiIslam is an anti-Muslim and anti-Islam wiki. The website was founded by Ali Sina in 2006 and acquired by the Ex-Muslims of North America in 2015. Registered users may modify and edit its content.
Intercom, Inc. is a software company that specializes in business messaging, providing businesses with a way to chat with their customers. Intercom has its headquarters in San Francisco with offices in Chicago, Dublin, Sydney and London.
Everipedia is a defunct online encyclopedia. Everipedia was founded in 2014 and was officially launched in 2015, as a fork of Wikipedia by Larry Sanger. In 2022, Everipedia was inactivated, becoming a static archive and redirecting to a new crypto-only encyclopedia, IQ.Wiki.
