Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:26, 30 December 2013

Bomis (/ˈbɒms/ to rhyme with "promise") was a dot-com company founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Its primary business was the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and to provide support for the 💕 projects Nupedia and Misplaced Pages. The name was an acronym of Bitter Old Men in Suits.

The site included "Bomis Babes", which was a segment devoted to erotic images. Within this section the site featured the "Bomis Babe Report" which documented adult pictures.

History

Foundation

Jimmy Wales wanted to participate in the online-based entrepreneurial ventures which were gaining popularity and success during the middle of the 1990s. He had previous experience from gaming in his youth which impressed upon him the influence of networking in society. Wales co-founded Bomis in 1996 with his business associate Tim Shell. Formally BOMIS is not an abbreviation; the motivation for the name stemmed from an acronym for "Bitter Old Men In Suits" that Wales and Shell had used to refer to themselves during the time period when they were working as financial traders in Chicago. The site started as a form of web portal.

Hosted content

Bomis became successful after focusing on X-rated media. Users were able to pay for a subscription to the site which provided access to premium adult content and erotic material. Advertising garnered monetary earnings which enabled the company to provide funding for other websites.

The site included "Bomis Babes", which was a segment devoted to erotic images. Within this section the site featured the "Bomis Babe Report" which documented adult pictures. Bomis Babes provided naked images of females to the subscribers of its services. According to the book Crowdsourcing by author Jeff Howe, Bomis included softcore pornography among its erotic material offerings.

Bomis helped users find erotic material online through a web search engine. Peer-to-peer services provided by the site assisted users in finding other websites about female celebrities including Anna Kournikova and Pamela Anderson.

The site earned the nickname "Playboy of the Internet" from The Atlantic.

Nupedia and Misplaced Pages

Bomis is best known for having supported the creation of the free-content online encyclopedia projects Nupedia and subsequently Misplaced Pages. Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales started Nupedia while utilizing resources from Bomis. Bomis provided early financing for Nupedia through some of the company's profits. Nupedia first went live in March 2000. Originally, Bomis was planning to make Misplaced Pages a profitable business. According to author Roy Rosenzweig, Misplaced Pages would not have survived without this early support from Bomis.

For a while, Bomis provided web servers and bandwidth for these projects, and owned key items such as the associated domain names. As the costs of Misplaced Pages rose with its popularity, Bomis' revenues declined as result of the dot-com crash. Wales thought advertising was a possibility, but the Misplaced Pages community was against any business development. Misplaced Pages remained a for-profit venture operating under the auspices of Bomis throughout the end of 2002. Since Misplaced Pages became a drain on Bomis' resources, Wales and Sanger, thought of a different way to fund the project - charity. Bomis was placed into a position where it needed to let go the majority of its employees to continue operating as Misplaced Pages with its new not-for-profit status was not producing revenues for the company. Bomis effectively owned the assets of Misplaced Pages from its creation through 2003. In June 2003, the property of Misplaced Pages was formally given over to the nascent non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation.

See also

• Erotica
• Eroticism
• Hypermasculinity
• Lad culture
• List of men's magazines
• Machismo
• Masculism
• Masculine psychology
• Masculinity
• Maxim (magazine)

References

1. Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). "Bias, Sabotage haunt Misplaced Pages's Free World". The Boston Globe. Boston, Massachusetts. Retrieved December 27, 2013. Wales, raised in Alabama, made a fortune in the Chicago futures market in the 1990s, and moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1996 to start his online Internet portal site, Bomis.com. At first, Bomis featured soft-core erotic content.
2. ^ Stöcker, Christian (August 31, 2010). "Eine Weltmacht im Netz". Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved October 14, 2012.
3. "Bomis FAQ". Bomis. Archived from the original on July 24, 2008. Retrieved October 14, 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. ^ Kuchinskas, Susan (March 26, 2009). "Jimmy Wales: Why the recession will not kill digital media". iMedia Connection. Retrieved October 14, 2012.
5. ^ Hansen, Evan (December 19, 2005). "Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired News. Retrieved December 20, 2013.
6. ^ Roy Rosenzweig (2013). Clio Wired: The Future of the Past in the Digital Age. Columbia University Press. pp. 54, 81, 258, 261. ISBN 0231521715.
7. ^ Keen, Andrew (2008). The Cult of the Amateur. Random House. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0385520816.
8. ^ Susan Meyer (2012). Jimmy Wales and Misplaced Pages. Rosen Pub Group. pp. 29–35, 56–58, 84–86. ISBN 978-1448869121.
9. ^ Zittrain, Jonathan (2008). The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It. Yale University Press. p. 133. ISBN 0300145349.
10. ^ Blakely, Rhys (December 20, 2005). "Misplaced Pages founder edits himself". Times Online. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
11. ^ Howe, Jeff (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Crown Business. pp. 58–60. ISBN 0307449327.
12. ^ Henderson, Harry (2008). Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology. Facts on File. p. 500. ISBN 1438110030.
13. ^ Neate, Rupert (October 7, 2008). "Misplaced Pages founder Jimmy Wales goes bananas". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved October 01, 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
14. Lessig, Lawrence (2009). Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Penguin Books. pp. 156–157. ISBN 0143116134.
15. ^ Finkelstein, Seth (September 24, 2008). "Read me first: Misplaced Pages isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
16. Poe, Marshall (September 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly. The Atlantic Monthly Group. Retrieved December 27, 2013.

Further reading

Primary sources

• "Nekkid.info Whois Record". www.whois.sc. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
• "Nekkid.info". www.nekkid.info. Internet Archive. January 14, 2002. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
• "Bomis What's New". Archived from the original on January 18, 2010. Retrieved July 14, 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• "Freedom's Nest". Archived from the original on March 23, 2006. Retrieved October 23, 2011.
• Wales, Jimmy (October 28, 2001). "A question". Misplaced Pages-l. Retrieved December 30, 2013.
• Wales, Jimmy (June 20, 2003). "Announcing Wikimedia Foundation". Misplaced Pages-l. Retrieved December 30, 2013.

Secondary sources

• Blakely, Rhys (December 20, 2005). "Misplaced Pages founder edits himself". Times Online. Times Newspapers Ltd. Archived from the original on February 21, 2007. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
• Hansen, Evan (December 19, 2005). "Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired News. Condé Nast. Retrieved December 27, 2013.

External links

• Bomis at the Internet Archive

• Companies
• Florida
• Internet
• Nudity
• Pornography
• Sexuality
• United States

• Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions
• Defunct online companies
• Internet companies of the United States
• History of Misplaced Pages
• Companies established in 1996
• Companies based in St. Petersburg, Florida
• Defunct networking companies