Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans to offer a free online hosting service through Wikia Inc. despite not having a clue how to make money from it.
“Openserving will go further than Wikia’s current services, by giving away hosting services and bandwidth, in addition to allowing site creators to keep the advertising revenue generated by the site.” The open source content management platform Wikia acquired last week via the purchase of sports fan-site Airmchair GM will allow Openserving customers to create collaborative publishing sites that are a cross between traditional blogs and wikis.
So how do you make money from a project like this? “Well, I don’t know yet” explained Wikia CEO Gil Penchina.
Believe it or not, the lack of a definitive business model did not stop Bessermer Venture Partners and Amazon.com from investing big money in the project. So the question is, will Openserving be a boon to the “free culture” movement or a gigantic financial mistake for Wikia?
According to the website, Openserving will go live “shortly.”
