26 Facts About Bomis

Bomis was a dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia.

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 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 through the end of 2002.

Bomis'sll served as CEO of the company in 2005, while on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees.

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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.

Bomis became acquainted with Tim Shell from email lists discussing philosophy.

Bomis's experience impressed on him the importance of networking.

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.

Bomis became successful after it focused on X-rated and erotic media.

About ten percent of Bomis' revenue was derived from pornographic films and blogs.

Wales referred to the site's softcore pornography as "glamour photography", and Bomis became familiar to Internet users for its erotic images.

Subscription section, Bomis Premium, provided access to adult content and erotic material; A three-day trial was US$2.

Bomis created the Babe Engine, which helped users find erotic material online through a web search engine.

Bomis is best known for supporting the creation of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia.

At that time, Bomis was attempting to obtain advertising revenue for Nupedia and the company was optimistic that it could fund the project with ad space on Nupedia.

Bomis originally planned to make Wikipedia profitable, providing staffing and hardware for its initial structure; Wikipedia would not have survived without this early support.

Bomis provided web servers and bandwidth for the projects, owning key items such as domain names.

Wales used money from Bomis to maintain the Wikipedia servers in Tampa, Florida.

In late 2000 Bomis had a staff of about 11 employees, but by early 2002 layoffs reduced the staff to its original size of about five.

Bomis continued contributing to community discussions, optimistic about Wikipedia's future success.

Bomis laid off most of its employees to continue operating, since Wikipedia was not generating revenue.

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.

Bomis'sll remained CEO of Bomis in 2006, becoming vice-president of the Wikimedia Foundation and continuing to serve on its board.

Bomis removed references to Bomis Babes as softcore pornography and erotica, and Larry Sanger as co-founder of Wikipedia.

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Bomis was called the "Playboy of the Internet" by The Atlantic, and the sobriquet was used by publications including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, MSN Money, Wired, The Torch Magazine, and the 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen.