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Bomis is a dot-com company founded in 1996. Its primary business is the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Wales is also known as the founder of Misplaced Pages and the founder and president of the Wikimedia Foundation. Tim Shell is a member of the board of trustees of Wikimedia and the current CEO of Bomis.
On the Bomis.com site, Bomis creates and hosts web rings around popular search terms. The rings are currently categorized broadly as "Babes", "Entertainment", "Sports", "Adult", "Other" and "Science fiction". The "Adult", "Babes" and "Entertainment" categories are the most frequently updated and the most popular. In addition, Bomis hosts a copy of the DMOZ search directory. Revenue on the search-related pages is generated from advertising and affiliate marketing.
Bomis also ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com, closed in 2005. At a rate of USD 19.95 per month and USD 2.95 for the first three days, Bomis Premium offered access to photographs of nude and partially-nude women, featuring 403 different models (a total of 54658 pictures). A typical series of pictures would show a female model undressing and posing, often with spread legs and shaved pubic hair. A small number of pictures showed models posing with sex toys, though never using them. When dressed, models were often shown wearing Bomis t-shirts. In addition, there were also videos of models in the nude, with some acting suggestively with objects such as bananas.
Until mid-2005, Bomis also featured the Bomis Babe Report, a free blog, publishing news and reviews about celebrities, models, and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report prominently linked to Bomis Premium, and frequently posted updates about new models joining Bomis.
Role in the creation of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages
Bomis is most notable for creating the online encyclopedia project Nupedia, and hiring Larry Sanger to manage it. During the early stages of this project, Sanger began the development of Misplaced Pages, which was originally intended as a sub-project and drafting platform for the more formally organized Nupedia. However, Misplaced Pages, with its much lower barrier to entry, rapidly outgrew its "parent", and soon became far larger than the main business of Bomis itself.
For a while, Bomis not only provided web servers and bandwidth for these projects, but owned some key items such as the associated domain names. However, with ever-rising costs, and a general reluctance to display advertising on the site - together with a desire to reflect the spirit of openness and neutrality central to Misplaced Pages - an alternative ownership model was sought. The Wikimedia Foundation was formally announced on June 20, 2003, and all related assets (both in terms of intellectual property and computer hardware) were transferred or donated to this non-profit organisation. (See: By-laws of the Wikimedia Foundation (PDF file)). Larry Sanger had by this time left the project, but Jimmy Wales retains a key role on the board of the Foundation, along with users elected from the Misplaced Pages community. The Foundation now funds the operation of Misplaced Pages (and its sister projects) through donations from various sources.
Jimmy Wales has since started several other wiki-based projects, affiliated to neither Bomis nor Wikimedia.
References
- "Bomis What's New". December 24.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=and|year=/|date=mismatch (help) - "Bomis Premium Site". December 24.
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External links and sources
- Official Bomis website
- List of Bomis slogans – a seemingly random slogan from the list is displayed on each www.bomis.com page
- Jimmy Wales on the Misplaced Pages-L mailing list about Bomis